Merrill Lynch Canada’s asset management arm has been renamed CM Investment Management Inc. by its new owner, CIBC. And the former Merrill Lynch Mutual Funds have become the Renaissance Mutual Funds.

The new name for the fund family was required under the terms of a purchase agreement between CIBC and Merrill Lynch. In January 2002, CIBC completed the purchase of Merrill Lynch Investment Managers Canada Inc., manager of the 29 former Merrill Lynch mutual funds.

CIBC continues to operate this business as a separate legal entity and business unit under the CM Investment Management name and the mutual fund family continues to be sold as a separate fund family under its new name.

The funds continue to be offered with the same teams of portfolio managers. CM Investment Management remains committed to offering Canadian investors access to a talent pool of outstanding portfolio managers in Canada and around the world through Renaissance Mutual Funds.

Currently, the funds represent more than $4 billion in client assets. It also manages nine Frontiers Pools and provides some advisory services to CIBC Wood Gundy on its segregated separate account products.

“We chose the Renaissance name because the Renaissance was a period defined by intellectual and creative achievement,” says Sonia Baxendale, executive vice-president, CIBC Wealth Management, who leads CM Investment Management Inc. “As a major Canadian money manager, with connections to outstanding teams of portfolio managers around the globe, our new fund family aspires to emulate these qualities.”