Sales and Trading Equity Sales and Trading. Our institutional equity sales team serves customers out of our New York, London, Boston, Hartford, Atlanta and San Francisco offices. Unlike many of our larger, less specialized competitors, all of our sales representatives are specifically trained in the analysis of financial services companies. Our sales and trading team provides specialized services, including value-added, industry and sector-specific trading expertise, research and access to capital markets transactions. Through an extensive use of sector-focused presentations and transaction-related teach-ins we have emphasized educating our sales force as we have expanded our business model to include additional sectors of the financial services industry. We have access to all major exchanges in the United States and Europe. Our U.S. equity trading team makes markets in over 800 Nasdaq and NYSE financial services and consistently ranks among the top traders of financial services securities. As reported by AutEx/BlockDATA, for the twelve months ended December 31, 2007 we were one of the top three market makers in 36% of the stocks in the NASDAQ 100 Financial Index. We are the largest of bank stocks with a market capitalization below $5 billion. During this same twelve month period, we traded 9.9% of small cap bank stocks, with a trade volume in excess of 510 million shares. In overall reported trading volume in the NASDAQ 100 Financial Index companies during this period, we ranked seventh, with a market share of 4.6% or 769 million shares. We maintain relationships with many of the world’s largest institutional investors including both domestic and international investment advisors, banks, mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds and insurance companies. Our equity sales group provides institutional customers with significant access to company managements and our research analysts. This is accomplished through our many industry focused conferences, roadshow access for capital markets transactions, and a combination of issuer management marketing days, including marketing trips, group meetings and field trips, combined with analyst marketing trips and “Best Ideas” presentations and our annual “Bruyette Dinners.” We are an active participant in corporate repurchase programs for small, mid and large cap companies. We have also been willing to commit our capital to participate in “bought” deals and accelerated share repurchase programs. Fixed Income Sales and Trading. Our fixed income group conducts sales and trading operations in New York City with sales branches in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Hartford and San Francisco. We trade and underwrite a wide range of fixed income securities, including mortgage-backed securities, U.S. Treasury and Federal Agency securities, and a wide array of corporate bonds and preferred , including those issued by banks, insurance companies, REITs, and companies, including Trust Preferred Securities and PreTSLsTM and similar securities issued by competitors. Our fixed income syndicate team works with the firm’s department to provide financing for M&A activity, balance sheet restructuring and capital raising. We support such financings with secondary trading. Our financial balance sheet management group provides valuations and restructuring strategies for the full range of securities and loans, including those loans which are sub-performing, non-performing and charged- off.

Research As of December 31, 2007, our research covered 569 domestic and international financial services companies such as bank and thrift holding companies, banks, thrifts, REITs, and specialty finance, insurance and securities firms and securities exchanges. Our research group follows nearly all of the financial services industry companies in the S&P 500 and Dow Jones STOXX 600 Index, as well as hundreds of other U.S. and European financial services companies on a daily basis. Our research provides the foundation for five widely followed domestic industry indices: the KBW Bank Index (BKX), the KBW Regional Banking Index (KRX), the KBW Insurance Index (KIX), the KBW Capital Markets Index (KSX), and the KBW Mortgage Finance

4