(Bloomberg) -- Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce is bulking up its coverage in leveraged finance, hiring veteran banker Brad Aston from Barclays Plc for its capital-markets business. 

Aston will join the bank as managing director and global head of leveraged finance in capital markets, and will be based in New York, CIBC said Tuesday in an internal memo seen by Bloomberg News. 

The Toronto-based bank has doubled revenue from its US capital-markets business in the last five years, according to the note, signed by investment banking head Kevin Li and the co-heads of debt capital markets, Andrew Lee and Sean Gilbert. 

CIBC is staffing up in the leveraged-loan space amid a broader fight for talent as Wall Street banks attempt to win back business from private credit firms that have grabbed a larger role in backstopping deals. 

“Expanding our business with North American financial sponsors, pension funds and corporates in this growing product area is an important strategic growth driver,” CIBC said in the memo. 

Aston, who starts in August and will report to Li, has almost 20 years of experience in the space and was most recently head of industrials and energy leveraged finance at Barclays.

His hiring comes after CIBC recently recruited Vishal Bhalla from Goldman Sachs for a managing director role in the leveraged-finance group.  

Others on the bank’s US leveraged-finance team include managing directors Iain MacInnis and Marc Mainelli, plus Marc Borden, who joined the bank in 2022 from JPMorgan Chase & Co. as head of energy, infrastructure and transition leveraged finance, CIBC said.  

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