News Releases

TORONTO, January 17, 2011 – BMO Financial Group announced today that starting January 2011, BMO Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs)* will pay monthly distributions on 14 funds that previously paid distributions on a quarterly basis. Additionally, distributions on nine funds are changing from a quarterly basis to an annual basis.

“The goal of our ETFs is to ensure that they continue to meet Canadian investors' needs effectively and efficiently. In current markets, investors are increasingly recognizing the benefits of income within their portfolios, and are placing a greater emphasis on regular income generation. We believe that by changing to monthly distributions on our higher yielding ETFs, we are simplifying investment decisions for our customers,” said Rajiv Silgardo, Co-CEO, BMO Global Asset Management.

Details of the ETFs distribution frequency are as follows:

Further information about BMO ETF Products can be found at www.bmo.com/etfs.

*BMO ETFs are managed and administered by BMO Asset Management Inc., an investment counsel firm and a separate legal entity from Bank of Montreal.

About BMO Financial Group

Established in 1817 as Bank of Montreal, BMO Financial Group is a highly-diversified North American financial services organization. With total assets of $409 billion as at October 31, 2010, and more than 38,000 employees, BMO Financial Group provides a broad range of retail banking, wealth management and investment banking products and solutions.

The “Dow Jones”-branded indexes underlying BMO's ETFs are products of Dow Jones Indexes, the marketing name and a licensed trademark of CME Group Index Services LLC ("CME"), and have been licensed for use.  The Dow Jones Brookfield Global Infrastructure Index^SM is published by Dow Jones Indexes pursuant to an agreement between CME and Brookfield Asset Management Inc. (“Brookfield”), and has been licensed for use.  “Dow Jones,” “Dow Jones Industrial Average”, "Dow Jones Indexes", “Brookfield”,   and “Dow Jones Brookfield Global Infrastructure Index” are service marks of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings, LLC ("Dow Jones") and/or or Brookfield or its affiliates, as the case may be, have been licensed to CME Group Index Services LLC ("CME") and sublicensed for use by BMO Asset Management Inc. (“BMO”). “Titans” is a service mark of CME and has been licensed for use by BMO.  The BMO ETFs based on CME's indexes are not sponsored, endorsed, sold or promoted by CME, Dow Jones, Brookfield or their respective affiliates and CME, Dow Jones, Brookfield and their respective affiliates make no representation regarding the advisability of investing in such ETFs.

Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC (“S&P”) and TSX is a trademark of Toronto Stock Exchange (“TSX”). These trademarks have been licensed for use by Bank of Montreal. The BMO ETFs are not sponsored, endorsed, sold or promoted by S&P or TSX, and S&P and TSX make no representation, warranty or condition regarding the advisability of buying, selling or holding units of the BMO ETFs.

Nasdaq^� is a registered trademark of The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. and has been licensed for use by BMO Asset Management Inc. for certain purposes.  The BMO ETF based on the Nasdaq index is not issued, endorsed, sold or promoted by Nasdaq.  NASDAQ MAKES NO WARRANTIES AND BEARS NO LIABILITY WITH RESPECT TO THE BMO ETF.

Media Contacts:

Martha McInnis, Toronto, martha.mcinnis@bmo.com, (416) 867-3996
Sarah Bensadoun, Montreal, sarah.bensadoun@bmo.com, (514) 877-8224
Laurie Grant, Vancouver, laurie.grant@bmo.com, (604) 665-7596