First Ontario Labour Sponsored Investment Fund Ltd. announced today that it and Crosbie Capital Management Inc. have agreed not to extend their investment management agreement.

First Ontario and Crosbie will be transitioning the responsibility for managing the portfolio with a target completion date of July 31, 2002.

The $61 million fund is managed by First Ontario Management Ltd., which in turn has been using Crosbie Capital Management Inc. as a portfolio manager for some of the fund’s venture investments. The fund has approximately $44 million invested in venture investments. First Ontario Management Ltd., which already directly manages most of the fund’s venture investments, will take over managing the remaining $17 million of venture investments currently managed by Crosbie.

Both parties agree the arrangement to use Crosbie as a portfolio manager made most sense for the fund when it was in the early stages of development. Now that the fund has achieved a size whereby it is more cost effective to manage investments internally.