James B. Withers

SMH Capital, Inc. (SMH) is the primary broker subsidiary of Sander Morris Harris Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SMHG). The firm is headquartered in Houston, Texas with additional offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco. SMH provides a full range of asset and wealth management and investment banking services. The firm also offers institutional equity sales, trading, and research, as well as prime brokerage services for hedge funds and fixed-income securities sales and trading. SMH's research effort is attuned to the Southwest, yet takes a broad, global perspective. The analysts cover companies in six broad sectors, including business services, energy, entertainment and media, financial services, specialty retail-softlines, and technology. They look at industries in a bottom-up way, and get to know company managements in depth, to understand their growth philosophy and their views of how their company fits within their group. SMH's growth strategy is to expand asset management and fiduciary activities and related business by increasing assets under management through acquisitions, internal growth and better coordination between their subsidiaries.

Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, Banc of America Securities (BAS) is the investment banking subsidiary of Bank of America Corp (NYSE: BAC). The firm provides both the domestic and international equity and investment banking markets, and pursues a strategy pioneered by Citigroup that combines corporate lending with investment banking advice and services. They provide high-yield debt underwriting and leveraged finance, in addition to industry coverage groups such as healthcare, media and telecom, financial institutions, real estate and gaming. BAS also does a significant amount of work for Financial Sponsors, or private equity firms, often financing leveraged transactions. Following the strategy of Goldman Sachs, the firm lacks a standalone mergers and acquisitions department, instead employing mergers and acquisitions senior bankers throughout the industry coverage groups. The firm is registered as a broker/dealer with the SEC, is a member of the NYSE, and the NASD. The use of Banc in the BAS's name is indicative of the fact that the company is not a bank, and their deposits and other holdings are not insured by the FDIC.