…The reason Gee Jeffery & Partners – the incumbent agency that helped build the Cantel and Amigo wireless brands – didn’t make it to the Rogers Communications shortlist is because it has just picked up a hefty piece of business from a U.S. telecommunications company.

…No one is surprised that all of the Rogers’ picks are offices of U.S.-based multinationals. Rogers is perceived to have a U.S. bias, particularly when it comes to hiring senior execs who, aside from John Tory, have predominantly been Yanks.

…TAXI Advertising & Design has been bumped from the Look Communications review at the prompting of Teleglobe, one of the major shareholders in the wireless digital broadcast company, because it believes there’s a conflict with another TAXI client – Clearnet.

… HHCL, the British ad shop that landed on the Molson shortlist last month, has a reputation for producing interesting if slightly offbeat work – like a heat-activated poster it created for Mazda a few years back. More recently, the agency has guzzled plaudits for its work on Tango, a carbonated orange beverage popular with the U.K. crowd. But it seems some ink-stained scribblers from across the pond view the shop as a bit too full of its own creative. DeBrief, a monthly British marketing pub, describes HHCL as a ‘hubris-ridden shop,’ and a ‘puzzlingly modish purveyor of idiosyncratic advertising.’

…ING Direct could be shaking up the mutual fund business just as it has the Canadian retail banking sector. The Dutch-based branchless bank is preparing to launch a line of mutual funds in September. No word yet on whether sexy ING spokesman Frederik de Groot will be pitching the mutfunds. Canadian women who have fallen in love with the middle-aged Dutch actor will be relieved to know that he’ll soon be on the air again with a new pool of spots. Filming wrapped in Toronto last month.

…Andrew Bruce had barely warmed the chair of his new office at Toronto’s Publicis-SMW before he was involved in one of his favourite activities – new business pitches. It’s said that Bruce, the agency’s COO, was in Montreal as part of the Publicis pitch for the $10-million Aldo Shoes account – and made it to the shortlist.

…The latest client to sign on with fledgling Toronto firm Zig is YTV. The specialty channel was relaunched last fall but now has Zig working on something new and unconventional – YTV’s positioning line is ‘Keep it Weird’ – that should be visible late summer.

With files from Sinclair Stewart and John Gray.