Cohen Brothers, LLC Hires Synthetic ABS Traders.

NEW YORK -- Cohen Brothers, LLC ("Cohen Bros.") has hired new traders to augment its asset management capabilities in the asset backed securities (ABS) and synthetic arenas.

Ralph Nacey, a Director and Head of Structured ABS Derivative Trading at Merrill Lynch as well as Eric Phillipps, a Vice President also from Merrill Lynch, where the two were responsible for trading structured credit products backed by asset backed securities, have joined the capital markets team at Cohen Bros. There they will be joining their former supervisor, Cohen Bros. Chief Executive Officer, Chris Ricciardi and former Merrill colleagues Lars Norell, Head of Capital Markets at Cohen Bros. and Steve D'Agostino Head of CDO Analytics at Cohen Bros.

At Merrill Lynch, Mr. Ricciardi was the Global Head of Structured Credit Products. Mr. Ricciardi and his team are among the best known Collateralized Debt Obligation ("CDO") professionals in the market today. They have led the market for CDO underwriters for the past six years - first at Credit Suisse and then at Merrill Lynch.

ABS CDOs were a product that Ricciardi and his team pioneered while at Prudential Securities in 1999. Since then the team has led that particular market each year, often with market share in excess of 35%. In addition to being pioneers in the general ABS CDO market, they were early adopters of the emerging ABS Credit Derivatives technology. In 2001, while Mr. Ricciardi was at what is now Credit Suisse, his firm won Institutional Investor's Derivative Deal of the Year for an ABS Credit Derivative deal for Freddie Mac. That early transaction was a model for how future ABS Credit Derivatives would be structured.

"ABS-backed credit derivatives are perhaps the most dynamic and fastest growing product in the market," said Mr. Ricciardi. "The product is new, but it closely resembles a similar product, corporate credit derivatives, when it was in its early stages. The corporate credit derivatives market is currently an enormous market which has grown rapidly from its introduction about 10 years ago. In that period, key participants in the market greatly benefited from the growth in the product. Most experts agree that the ABS credit derivatives market has similar potential."

He added that the recent introduction of standardized definitions and the launch of a broad tradable index mirror the early developments in corporate credit derivatives and are notable milestones in the product's life cycle.

"With the hire of Ralph Nacey and Eric Phillipps," Mr. Ricciardi said, "Cohen Bros. will be well positioned to take advantage of new asset management opportunities that arise in the ABS and related synthetic arenas."

Nacey and Phillipps were among the team that joined Ricciardi at Merrill Lynch from Credit Suisse in 2003.

Nacey was a former Captain in the U.S. Army who graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point with a B.S. in Physics. Phillipps joined Credit Suisse directly from Columbia University where he earned a B.A.

About Cohen Bros.

Cohen Bros. specializes in financing small and mid-sized financial institutions primarily through the issuance of collateralized debt obligations ("CDOs"). Cohen Bros. 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 specific experience in managing mortgage and asset backed portfolios and have issued two CDOs backed by ABS. Cohen Bros currently has approximately $8 billion in mortgage and ABS assets under management.