Cohen Brothers, LLC Hires Global Head of IT Development.

NEW YORK -- Cohen Brothers, LLC has hired Mark Tolani to fill the newly created position of Global Head of Information Technology Development.

According to Cohen Brothers Chief Executive Officer Chris Ricciardi, the creation of the new position, and the hiring of Mr. Tolani, is in response to continued growth in the company's CDO businesses. "As we extend our presence in the CDO market with the completion of a number of new transactions, we are adding substantial resources to ensure our technology platform keeps pace with our business. Having the best systems available for making investment decisions and monitoring the risk in all of our CDO portfolios is a critical part of maintaining our leadership position as a CDO manager."

Mr. Ricciardi said he anticipates that Cohen Brothers will complete more than a dozen CDO transactions during 2006, a pace well ahead of last year's transaction volume. "The size of the commitment we are making to CDO issuance provides the basis for making substantial investments in the infrastructure of our CDO platform."

Mr. Tolani comes to Cohen Brothers from KBC Financial Products, a global sell-side firm specializing in market-making of corporate bonds, synthetic CDO structuring and issuance, proprietary trading, and hedge fund and insurance derivatives. Mr. Tolani was an Executive Vice President at KBC, where he was co-head of front office technology in New York. Previously he held positions in fixed income technology and research at Morgan Stanley, Union Bank of Switzerland, and Credit Suisse First Boston. He was also previously a principal at two financial services software start-ups and is a Chartered Financial Analyst.

According to Steve D'Agostino, Chief Technology Officer of Cohen Brothers, who joined Cohen Brothers earlier this year from Merrill Lynch with Mr. Ricciardi, "Mark Tolani is a perfect fit due to his breadth of expertise in technology, as well as his experience with a wide array of fixed income products. With Mark's leadership, our goal is to have best in class technology across our businesses, including CDO collateral origination, CDO portfolio management, and CDO administration and structuring."

About Cohen Brothers, LLC

Cohen Brothers specializes in financing small and mid-sized financial institutions primarily through the issuance of collateralized debt obligations ("CDOs"). Cohen Brothers was the second largest asset manager of new issue CDOs in 2005 and the largest manager of CDOs backed by financial institution debt. They also have dedicated portfolio management groups that focus on CDOs backed by ABS and CLOs backed by middle market loans. Cohen Bros currently has approximately $18 billion in assets under management.

For further information contact Sheila Chambliss at 215-861-7824 or [e-mail].