Rick C. Nelson

Founded by James Giordano in 1999, J. Giordano Securities Group, Inc. is an independent, privately-owned full-service investment banking and brokerage firm headquartered in New York City. The firm is also known as NewOak Capital Markets LLC. They provide a range of investment banking services for small-cap and middle-market companies including private capital, initial and follow-on public equity offerings, convertible debt and preferred stock offerings, high yield offerings and M&A advisory services. J. Giordano Securities Group also provides equity and fixed-income research to institutional clients. The firm's research focuses on the following sectors: (1) industrial services (2) conventional energy (3) regional and special situations (4) shipping (5) healthcare (6) homeland defense and (7) business services. J. Giordano Securities Group is a member of the NASD and SIPC.

Jesup & Lamont Securities Corp. is broker/dealer headquartered in New York City. The firm is a subsidiary of Jesup & Lamont, Inc. (AMEX: JLI), formerly Empire Financial Holding Co., a New York City-based full-service brokerage and investment banking firm that specializes in institutional, retail sales, trading services and equity research. Jesup & Lamont, Inc. was founded in 2000, but traces its roots to the 1877 partnership between James Jesup and Lansing Lamont. Jesup & Lamont Securities Corp. provides institutional and retail sales and trading services, equity research and asset management for institutions and high net-worth individuals. The firm's corporate finance activities include mergers and acquisitions, capital raising, acquisition finance, restructurings and other corporate finance matters. Their research covers the following areas in the US and abroad: biotechnology, industrials, specialty retail, aerospace/defense, alternative energy, oil & gas, restaurants, technology, transportation and special situations. Jesup & Lamont provides fundamental analysis of companies and sectors and also employs strategists and technical analysts to provide comprehensive research insights.

Founded in 2010 by James Giordano, Opus Group Financial is an independent, privately-owned, investment research and advisory firm located in New York City with an additional office in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. The firm provides in-depth, unbiased, equity research, financial advice and execution services to private, micro- and small-cap companies

Founded in 1994, Williams Capital Group LP is an investment banking firm and broker/dealer located in New York City. The firm serves institutional investors and corporations in the in equity, fixed-income, corporate finance, investment management and private equity markets. Williams Capital provides debt and equity underwriting, secondary market trading, equity research, stock repurchase and corporate finance advisory services. The firm trades and distributes commercial paper and other money market instruments, structured products, corporate debt, government agency notes, and domestic and international equities. The trading desk provides clients with full-service execution for all listed and over-the-counter stocks. Williams Capital Group's clients include small institutional and hedge fund managers, mutual funds, insurance companies and public and private pension funds. The firm's traders provide clients with proprietary research generated by their analytical staff. Williams Capital Group is a member of FINRA and the SIPC.

Founded in 2010, Consilium Global Research LLC is an independent investment research firm located in St. Petersburg, Florida. The firm's research focuses on high-quality small- and mid-cap companies that are underfollowed by Wall Street. They provide coverage on all industry groups. Consilium Global Research seeks to help undercovered companies achieve greater recognition in the investment community.

Founded in 1982, Morgan Joseph TriArtisan LLC, formerly Morgan Joseph & Co., Inc., is a full-service investment banking firm and broker/dealer headquartered in New York City. The firm was also previously known as Morgan Lewis & Co. Morgan Joseph TriArtisan is a subsidiary of Morgan Joseph TriArtisan Group, Inc. Morgan Joseph TriArtisan's primary focus is on providing financial advisory and capital raising services in the US, Europe and Asia. This includes mergers and acquisitions advice, restructuring advice, private placements and public offerings of debt and equity. For their institutional clients, Morgan Joseph TriArtisan provides a full range of sales and executions services, including equity research and specialized reports on convertible debt. The firm's sales and trading teams service a variety of institutional clients with both debt and equity investment ideas and trading services. Morgan Joseph primarily serves the consumer products, healthcare, automotive, chemical, transportation, construction, entertainment, telecommunications and media industries. Morgan Joseph TriArtisan's debt and equity analysts cover a growing universe of stock and bond issues across a broad range of industry sectors. Their equity research focuses primarily on middle-market companies with limited research and coverage and uses a classic bottom-up qualitative approach. The high-yield department specializes in finding trading opportunities by identifying undervalued and overvalued high-yield debt for institutional clients. They focus on small- to mid-sized issues that are not widely covered and are often mispriced in the market. Morgan Joseph TriArtisan is a member of FINRA, the NASD and the SIPC.

Kidder, Peabody & Co., Inc. provides security brokerage services. The private company is based in Buffalo, NY and has subsidiaries in Switzerland. The company was founded by Thomas W. Ostrander.

A subsidiary of Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc., Lehman Brothers, Inc. is a broker/dealer headquartered in New York City. They provide global equity and fixed research. The equity research department covers more than 100 sectors. They use a fundamental, quantitative, strategic and tactical research approach. In addition to these Lehman has also developed special products, such as 10 uncommon values and 10 uncommon eurovalues.