Gator Capital Management, LLC Announces Company Formation

Tampa, FL, April 2, 2008 – Gator Capital Management, LLC (“Gator Capital”) today announced its founding by Derek Pilecki, Gator Capital’s Managing Member and Portfolio Manager. Gator Capital will provide investment management services to high-net worth individuals and institutions with a distinctive focused high-quality, growth investment philosophy.

“We are setting out to bring a differentiated investment philosophy of focused high-quality, growth investing to the marketplace,” said Mr. Pilecki. “This is different from typical investment managers in two ways: first, by focusing our portfolios, we are not trying to mimic the market averages and second, by focusing on high-quality businesses we are investing in businesses with durable competitive advantages.

Mr. Pilecki continued, “Too many investment managers manage their clients’ portfolios making investments that closely replicate the market benchmarks, so their performance never strays too far from the market averages. This insures job security for the manager but lackluster returns for the investor. We invest in our best ideas with conviction, irrespective of the market benchmarks. We won’t always beat the market, but we intend to outperform and create wealth for our clients over the long-term.

“We are also different because we want to create wealth for our clients by making investments in high-quality businesses. We want these businesses to have durable competitive advantages that enable them to provide excess returns to their shareholders. More importantly, these high quality business should be able to withstand bumps in the economy without damages to their franchises. Look at the families on the Forbes 400. They didn’t become wealthy by trading in and out of the latest ethanol stock or by trying to time the bottom in financial stocks, rather, each family owned a single, high-quality business that provided excess returns for decades. We will have an advantage over these rich families in that we’ll have flexibility to choose which high-quality businesses to own.”

Gator Capital is registered with the State of Florida as a Registered Investment Adviser. Prior to founding Gator Capital, Mr. Pilecki was a co-Chair of the Investment Committee and a Portfolio Manager for Goldman Sach’s Growth Equity Team, where he helped to manage $28 billion in high-quality growth stocks. Mr. Pilecki was also a member of the portfolio management team responsible for the Goldman Sachs Capital Growth Fund, and provided primary coverage of the financial sector for the Growth Team.

Prior to Goldman, Mr. Pilecki was an Analyst at Clover Capital Management in Rochester, New York and Burridge Growth Partners (now part of Essex Investments) in Chicago, Illinois. Before entering graduate school, Pilecki worked at Fannie Mae providing risk analysis for the company’s mortgage investment portfolio. Mr. Pilecki holds an MBA with honors in Finance and Accounting from the University of Chicago and a BA in Economics from Duke University.

For more information or to open an account, please visit http://www.gatorcapital.com/

About Gator Capital Management

Gator Capital Management is a boutique investment management firm dedicated to the professional management of focused, high-quality growth investment portfolios for high-net worth individuals and institutions. Gator’s Investment Philosophy is to build portfolios of stocks by viewing each purchase an investment in the underlying business, by investing in high-quality growth businesses, and by focusing its portfolios on its best ideas. This press release does not constitute and is not intended to constitute an offer or solicitation for an investment in any Gator Capital investment portfolio, including the portfolios mentioned herein.