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A Canadian bank accused of helping Enron defraud investors agreed today to pay $2.4 billion in the third and largest settlement to date in the class-action lawsuit against Enron's former advisers.

The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, or CIBC, was a lesser-known adviser to Enron, but its payment tops both the $2.2 billion settlement with J.P. Morgan Chase and the $2 billion settlement with Citibank. Compared with the other two, CIBC is a small company with shallow pockets, and its steep settlement points to the rising cost of hesitation among Enron defendants.

The settlement puts greater pressure on those banks remaining - especially larger Wall Street firms like Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse First Boston - to reach their own settlements quickly, instead of holding out for the 11th-hour agreements that prevailed years ago. Moreover, the pattern suggests that the other companies are likely to pay larger amounts the longer they delay, even though a trial over the lawsuit is still more than a year off.

William S. Lerach, the lead counsel for the University of California, the largest plaintiff in the class-action shareholder lawsuit, acknowledged in a conference call with reporters this afternoon that those who settle earlier "would settle better than those who do not come to the table at an appropriate time." The University of California estimates that it invested $150 million in Enron, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002 and ultimately collapsed, making its shares worthless.

The settlement brings the total amount recovered so far to $7.1 billion, the largest recovery in a securities case. By contrast, the pool of money available to compensate investors in WorldCom, which perpetrated the largest accounting fraud in history, is $6.13 billion.

James E. Holst, the University of California's general counsel, promised the fund would continue growing, saying the settlement "sets the stage for very important additional progress that we anticipate making, and intend to make, in the further resolution of the shareholders."

The settlement suggests that, whatever the cost, Wall Street firms are scrambling to follow Citigroup's lead and to put Enron behind them and off their books.

Their partnerships with Enron, once one of the world's largest energy companies, had brought them hundreds of millions of dollars in underwriting and advisory fees, but investors argued that the firms were, in the process, helping Enron hide its true financial condition or create offshore entities that helped lead to its bankruptcy.

CIBC, in particular, was accused of conducting financial deals with Enron that created phantom profits and inappropriately removed huge debts from the company's balance sheet; lawyers also charged it with engaging Enron in various transactions that illegally failed to include an independent third party.

CIBC, based in Toronto, admitted no wrongdoing today in settling the charges. It said it expected the settlement to reduce its pretax earnings to $2.8 billion Canadian ($2.2 billion United States) in the quarter ended July 31, showing that it had set aside relatively modest reserves to cushion the blow.

"That's a lot of money for a firm that was thought to be a bit player in the Enron scandal," said Jake Zamansky, principal of Zamansky & Associates, a securities arbitration law firm in New York. "The settlement is a wake-up call for the remaining defendants, particularly Merrill Lynch."

Legal analysts have described Merrill Lynch as a more vulnerable target of the shareholders' class-action lawsuit since a handful of the investment firm's executives were convicted earlier this year of assisting Enron in a financing scheme in Nigeria.

But Mr. Zamansky suggested that the banks as a whole were already paying too little, nowhere near the estimated $40 billion lost by investors or the cost to employees who lost their jobs. "This was the seventh-largest company in the U.S., and shareholders' getting pennies on the dollars is inadequate," he said.

Whatever the amount recovered, Enron investors will see none of it until the case goes to trial or until all of the defendants have settled. Even then, a court must approve a plan for allocating the funds. Lawyers for the shareholders have not yet released such a plan, though they have said the bulk of the money would go to holders of common stock.

Mr. Lerach's firm, Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins, would receive 8 to 10 percent of the money recovered, also subject to court approval.