彭博特写：加拿大总理卡尼下周在多伦多首办「加拿大投资峰会」，Blackstone、BlackRock、淡马锡等高管与TIFF同期到场，尚无签约交易

Hollywood honchos are used to taking over Toronto’s high-end hotels and restaurants during the city’s annual film festival.

But this year, entertainment executives are competing for private dining rooms and penthouse suites with the heads of the world’s leading financial firms.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has invited Blackstone Inc.’s Jon Gray, BlackRock Inc.’s Larry Fink, Temasek Holdings’ Dilhan Pillay and dozens of others to Toronto for the inaugural Canada Investment Summit on Monday and Tuesday.

The money managers will arrive in a city already buzzing for the Toronto International Film Festival, or TIFF, with the influx of VIPs driving scarcity at luxury hotels, tables at gourmet restaurants, and helicopter transfers to and from the airport. It’s an atmosphere Carney, a former investment banker, hopes will produce enough dealmaking to power Canada’s economy through a trade war with the US.

When it comes to the city’s hotspots, “I did see an uptick in scarcity,” said David Manning, who runs a film promotion company in Los Angeles and has held many TIFF-related events in Toronto. This year he’s planning exclusive supper clubs celebrating the screenings of several movies, including the Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem drama Bunker. But Manning found many venues he’d previously used, including a steakhouse and a Greek restaurant, were already booked out.

“Our go-tos did have some larger buyouts, which I can only attribute to those financiers,” he said. “They tend to have big budgets.”

There may be no business like show business, but the dollar values film distributors haggle over pale in comparison to the deals Carney has called investors to discuss. These include a C$14.5 billion ($10.5 billion) data-center campus in Alberta, a $44 billion offshore wind farm in the North Atlantic and a long-term plan to dramatically increase exports through a port on the frigid waters of Hudson Bay, worth $57 billion.

Be they negotiations to build an oil pipeline to the Pacific or North American distribution rights for Werner Herzog’s new flick, the wheels of commerce are often greased by backslapping and bonhomie. For that, TIFF, which runs Sept. 10 to 20, offers rare opportunities.

Dealmakers with the right connections may be able to secure tickets to a red carpet premiere or an after-party with a chance to chat with movie stars. And the city’s watering holes are competing to offer extravagant festival-themed indulgences, from an C$8,888 feast at a renowned dim sum spot to a C$2,000 ($1,440) tableside cocktail at The St. Regis Toronto. Ashish Menon, the hotel’s director of sales and marketing, said they expect to sell 20 to 25 of the premium drinks during the festival period, as well as at least 80 slices of 13-layer, red-carpet-themed cake at C$55 apiece.

Even the Four Seasons, which is hosting Carney’s summit, has a festival-inspired cocktail: the C$1,000 Final Cut XO Sazerac, which includes Remy Martin XO cognac, 16-year-old Lagavulin Scotch and a ride in the hotel’s Rolls-Royce.

“It’s good for people who are looking at these Canadian investments to see what an event like TIFF does,” said Aaron Harrison, general manager at Bisha Hotel Toronto, a high-end property known for attracting celebrity-watchers. “It highlights our city at its best.”

The presence of so many big-name dealmakers in Toronto at once has prompted other conferences to spring up in parallel. The Milken Institute will hold its first summit in the city on Monday. There are events dedicated to investment from Asia, on infrastructure and on digital assets.

All this has made the crowds of businesspeople, and the demand for services catering to them, even bigger. To capitalize, helicopter charter company HeliSIX introduced weekday transfers between the airport and downtown, with one pilot on standby for last-minute requests. Luxury hotels, meanwhile, are booked out for dates surrounding the investment summit, with others charging double or more the usual rate.

“Finding rooms, finding spaces where you would want to have a nice meal for a tête-à-tête conversation about opportunity, is proving difficult,” said Benjamin Bergen, president of the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association, which will hold a conference Monday. Because his organization has a block of rooms at a waterfront hotel, he’s been helping officials from Canada’s provinces find accommodation.

“We have heard from governments that they’re looking for rooms,” he said. “And they’re looking for rooms at a reasonable rate because prices have gotten so high.”

While high-end hotels and restaurants may be ready to embrace an influx of moneyed guests, not every Canadian feels the same. A coalition called The Many vs. The Money is planning a rally and march — playing music, banging pots and pans and accompanied by stilt walkers — to the summit’s opening gala. They’re opposed to what they say is the summit’s agenda of privatization, defense spending and natural resource extraction.

“We want them to know the ways in which they’re not particularly welcome in our city,” said Rachel Small, an organizer with World Beyond War, one of the coalition’s members. “We won’t let them meet in peace and quiet.”

Still, the summit’s coinciding with TIFF will mean a celebratory atmosphere across much of downtown. Toronto’s film festival has long stood out for making tickets for all screenings available to the general public, unlike Cannes and others. This means much of the city’s downtown core typically comes alive with regular people going to the cinema, enjoying a meal or just hoping to spot celebrities.

Manning, the film promoter, suggests the visiting financiers may not be immune to the excitement.

“Everyone, no matter how much money they have, is a fan of somebody,” he said.