According to local sources, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) has hired Laurene Bielski Mahon to take on the role of managing director and head of global infrastructure finance.

Laurene Bielski has advised on or closed more than $40 billion of transactions in her 30 years of infrastructure deal-making. She is also recognized as one of the first bankers to develop and implement private sector financing schemes for infrastructure development.

She will be based in New York and will be responsible for developing and implementing a strategy to expand CIBC's infrastructure business.

Ms. Mahon will work with Doug Bartlett, managing director and head of government finance and infrastructure at CIBC.

She was most recently with McKinsey & Company in New York.

Before joining McKinsey last year, she spent 12 years as an independent advisor, serving numerous public and private entities developing transportation projects in the US, Latin America, China and the UK. From 1984 until 1999 she worked on Wall Street as an investment banker serving the infrastructure markets in both the US and abroad, concentrating on Latin America and the emerging markets. She was lead advisor to the Panama Canal Authority on its canal expansion project and financial advisor to the Republic of Mexico in the privatization of its national railway system.