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National Bank of Canada has hired respected Bay Street veteran David Skurka to help build up its investment bank.

When Mr. Skurka joins National Bank, likely in the new year, he will be a managing director and the head of Canadian Investment Banking for the Montreal-based lender.

He replaces Peter Jelley, the current head of investment banking, who announced his leaving on Wednesday after nearly two decades at National Bank. Mr. Jelley worked on major deals this year, including advising Enercare Inc. when it was acquired by Brookfield Infrastructure Partners LP for $3.1-billion in early August.

Over the last year, National Bank chief executive officer Louis Vachon has publicly set a goal to build the bank’s capital markets subsidiary, National Bank Financial Markets, into a top-three investment bank in Canada over the medium term. Mr. Skurka is expected to help push the bank toward that goal, and his arrival is part of a broader changing of the guard within the investment banking arm of Canada’s sixth-largest lender.

Three other bankers are taking on new managing director roles as part of the shuffle: Michael Levin was named head of diversified industries; Martin Robitaille was appointed head of global power, utilities and infrastructure; and Maude Leblond, the head of the financial institutions group, will now also lead the bank’s securitization group.

Mr. Skurka is best known for specializing in covering financial institutions. He spent the last two years at Toronto-Dominion Bank, as deputy chair of investment banking – a role created for his arrival. Before that, he was head of investment banking at Bank of Nova Scotia, where he worked for 14 years. In 2015, he was one of several senior bankers who left Scotiabank in a wider shakeup, as CEO Brian Porter put his stamp on the bank.

In his new role, Mr. Skurka will report to Yanick Blanchard, National Bank’s head of corporate and investment banking.

With files from Tim Kiladze.

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