Press Release

COHEN & COMPANY CONTINUES TO DRIVE ROBUST GROWTH OF INSTITUTIONAL BROKER-DEALER BUSINESS THROUGH SENIOR-LEVEL HIRES

Philadelphia, PA and New York, NY - January 30, 2009 - Cohen & Company, an investment firm specializing in credit related fixed income investments, today reported the continued expansion of Cohen & Company Securities, LLC, the company’s institutional broker-dealer focused on debt securities, through the following appointments at the Managing Director level:

• Sharif Anbar-Colas joins Cohen & Company as Global Head of CLO Trading and Head of European ABS Trading. Prior to joining Cohen & Company, Mr. Anbar-Colas served as Global Head of CDO Trading at UBS. He will work out of Cohen & Company’s London offices.



• Caroline Jennings joined Cohen & Company as an institutional mortgage securities sales executive. Previously, Ms. Jennings worked at Barclays for 10 years, where she was a topranked institutional salesperson. Prior to that, she was an institutional sales executive focused on mortgage- and asset-backed securities for JP Morgan Securities.



• Blake Murphy focuses on institutional mortgage securities sales. He joins the firm from Lehman Brothers, and also has prior experience with Fortis and Bear Stearns.



• Tom Murray specializes in institutional mortgage securities sales, and joins Cohen & Company from Lehman Brothers, where he worked for 15 years. Mr. Murray has particular expertise in raw loan sales and commercial mortgage-backed securities.



• Elaine Pang joins Cohen & Company as an institutional mortgage securities sales executive from Countrywide Securities. Before joining Countrywide, Ms. Pang was a top institutional sales executive in the mortgage departments of Deutsche Bank and Kidder Peabody.



• Maria Palermo joins the firm as an institutional mortgage securities sales executive. Ms. Palermo most recently worked at Barclays, and has developed several longstanding relationships with key government agencies and large securities lenders.

Christopher Ricciardi, Cohen & Company’s Chief Executive Officer, said, “The intensifying dislocation that has touched the entire financial services landscape and had a particularly severe impact on the major global financial institutions has also dislodged a wealth of talent at the senior-most levels that is ordinarily challenging to recruit. What we have witnessed in recent months is that, increasingly, the most experienced and skilled sales and trading executives in the credit and fixed income space are attracted to focused platforms such as ours. At the same time, we are also seeing a growing influx of institutional clients from around the world who are looking for a broker-dealer that has both deep credit and fixed income expertise as well as organizational stability.

“We welcome these new additions to our platform, which we look forward to continuing to grow in every respect. Going forward, we have the right strategy and resources, as well as the top talent, technology and tools necessary to build a clear market leadership position in this space. We look forward to continuing to add people and resources to this platform throughout the course of the year, in order to better serve our institutional client base.”

About Cohen & Company

Cohen & Company is an investment firm specializing in credit related fixed income investments with approximately $23 billion in assets currently under management in credit securities and other funds and investments across multiple asset classes. Through Cohen & Company Securities, LLC, the company also provides institutional broker-dealer services focused on debt securities. With offices in Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Paris, London and Tokyo, Cohen & Company serves a diverse international network of institutional and individual clients. For more information about Cohen & Company, we encourage you to visit www.cohenandcompany.com.