Miracle Day Trading Scores Big for New York Children's Charities.

Business/Financial Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)

Dec. 6, 2000-The Wall Street trades that take place a short cab ride away typically don't mean much to children struggling with epilepsy who stop in for evaluations at a research center on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

Today, however, those trades will mean a lot to patients and researchers at the NYU-Mt. Sinai Comprehensive Epilepsy Center. The World Financial Center office of CIBC Oppenheimer is donating the fees and commissions from all trades today, hoping to raise tens of thousands of dollars for the center and other charities as part of an annual program called "Miracle Day."

The fundraiser is part of the 16th annual Miracle Day, an international fundraising benefit carried out in all offices of CIBC Oppenheimer and its parent, CIBC World Markets. During the event, all trading and brokerage commissions are donated to charities that help children.

Last year, Miracle Day raised more than $12 million in the United States and Canada.

This year's New York recipients include the NYU-Mt. Sinai research program called FACES, short for the Fight Against Childhood Epilepsy and Seizures, as well as others that research cures for Cystic Fibrosis, Canavan's Disease and cancer. CIBC broker Ed Newman, a two-time cancer survivor himself, is supporting an effort he founded called the Sport Foundation Against Cancer.

The NYU-Mt. Sinai Comprehensive Epilepsy Center is the largest inpatient epilepsy center on the East Coast. Children with epilepsy come from foreign countries, and from all over the United States, to be evaluated and treated at the center. More than 2,500 children have been cared for at the Center over the past five years.

The FACES program supports a variety of research efforts into the disorder, which currently affects more than 2 million Americans. It also supports programs that make inpatient and outpatient experiences more comfortable and nurturing, and provides advocacy efforts on behalf of children with epilepsy and the parents.

"The donations from Miracle Day have allowed us to support important research that may never have been possible otherwise," said Dr. Orrin Devinsky of FACES. "We're helping to study the chemical causes of epilepsy. We're pioneering new therapeutic modalities such as magnetic stimulation. And we're helping children and their families find the emotional and medical help that they so desperately need."

CIBC spends months planning for the event, encouraging its individual and institutional clients to trade heavily on Miracle Day, which always falls in the first week of December. The firm also urges investors who are not clients to trade with CIBC Oppenheimer for that one day.

Miracle Day was launched in 1984 by the late Timothy Miller, a manager at CIBC Wood Gundy, the Canadian private client division of CIBC. Since its inception, the program has raised more than $31.2 million for children's charities.

The FACES program plans to use the CIBC money to advance three programs: a study of the electrical changes in epileptic nerve cells; clinical trials for a treatment that uses noninvasive magnetic stimulation of the scalp; and the creation of a support network for families and patients with epilepsy.

"It is enormously gratifying to know that our fees and commissions are going to such a tremendously worthy cause," said Gadi Ben-Menachem, branch manager of CIBC Oppenheimer's World Financial Center office. "These investments translate into real investments in the lives of young people who have so much to offer."

Other charities benefiting from Miracle Day donations this year include the Children's Hospital Foundation, Jacob's Cure, David Center, Heart of Camden, Cystic Fibrosis, and the Tolstoy Foundation.

About CIBC World Markets and CIBC Oppenheimer

CIBC Oppenheimer is the U.S. Private Client Division of CIBC World Markets Corp. CIBC World Markets is a subsidiary of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, one of North America's largest banks with approximately US $185 billion in assets as of July 31, 2000.

With 18 branch offices in the United States, CIBC Oppenheimer offers a range of investment strategies particularly suited to the sophisticated, high-net-worth individual. In addition, the firm has professionals who offer their support in providing corporate executive services, retirement services, financial planning, corporate cash management, mutual fund consulting and insurance-related products. CIBC Oppenheimer can be found on the World Wide Web (http://www.cibcoppenheimer.com/>.