Dekania Corp

Thomas H. Friedberg was appointed as our Chairman and a director in December 2006, and has served as our Chief Executive Officer since our inception. Since June 2003, Mr. Friedberg has been associated with Dekania Capital Management, most recently as Managing Director. Dekania Capital Management is a division of Cohen Brothers, LLC, the parent of our Sponsor, which manages trust preferred securities of insurance companies. Before that, from March 1999 to May 2003, Mr. Friedberg served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Stonington Insurance Company, a specialty, non-life company that insured propane dealers, explosive distributors and long-haul truck operators, and issued surety bonds to small contractors and bail bond agents. Stonington Insurance Company is a subsidiary of RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd. (NYSE:RNR), a publicly-held company specializing in property catastrophe reinsurance coverage. Prior to joining Stonington Insurance Company, he served as President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of ACCEL International Corporation (OTC:ACLE), a publicly-held specialty transportation insurer, from May 1995 to September 1998. ACCEL was comprised of both a life and a non-life company that offered specialty coverages to auto dealers, including credit life coverage for their customers and extended automobile warrantees, and various sectors of the transportation industry. Mr. Friedberg also spent eight years, from 1987 to 1995, as Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Ranger Insurance Companies, another specialty non-life group, that insured propane dealers, explosive distributors, gasoline distributors, grain elevators and issued surety bonds to bail bond agents.
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Paul Vernhes has served as our Chief Financial Officer since our inception. Since May 2005, Mr. Vernhes has served as the Managing Director of Cohen Frères, a French company specializing in European CDO programs of insurance company subordinated debt, including Dekania Europe CDO I, the first transaction of its kind, that won the “CDO deal of the year” award from Structured Finance International. Cohen Frères is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cohen Brothers, LLC, the parent of our Sponsor. From May 1998 to April 2005, Mr. Vernhes worked for Compagnie de Réassurance d’Ile de France, a French reinsurance company, wholly-owned by Markel Corp. (NYSE:MKL), a public company specializing in marketing and underwriting specialty insurance products and programs, serving as an underwriter and finished his employment there serving as Chief Financial and Accounting Officer.
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David Nathaniel has served as our Treasurer and Secretary since our inception and was a Director from February to July 2006. Since January 2006, Mr. Nathaniel has also served as the Chief Investment Officer of Alesco Financial Trust, a real estate investment trust and affiliate of our Sponsor which focuses on real estate-related and other securities, including trust preferred securities, mortgage backed securities and collateral loan obligations. He has served as an Executive Vice President of Cohen Brothers, LLC an affiliate of our Sponsor, since February 2005. Prior to joining Cohen Brothers, from October 2002 to January 2005, Mr. Nathaniel worked for Menorah, one of the largest insurance companies in Israel, serving as the Chief Investment Officer of its pension fund, Mivtachim Pension Funds, the largest pension fund in Israel with over $3 billion in assets under management. From September 2001 to October 2002, Mr. Nathaniel was the Executive Vice President and Chief Investment Officer of Gmul Investments Ltd., a real estate investment company where he was responsible for managing a portfolio of over $500 million of assets, principally real estate-related.
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Joel R. Crisalli has been a director since August 2007. Mr. Crisalli has engaged in a private consulting practice to the insurance industry since September 2006. From July 2003 to September 2006, Mr. Crisalli was senior vice president of operations and business development of Aerospace Holdings, Inc., an aviation insurance specialist. Mr. Crisalli served as senior vice president and corporate secretary of Stonington Insurance, a property/casualty insurance subsidiary of Renaissance U.S. Holdings from November 1995 to July 2003. From July 1987 to November 1995, Mr. Crisalli was the vice president of underwriting, marketing and corporate planning for Republic Insurance, a property/casualty insurance company. Mr. Crisalli has held a Society of Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters designation since 1977.
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Stephen M. Qua has been a director since April 2006. From July 1957 until January 2006, Mr. Qua held several positions with Qua Auto Group ultimately becoming its President. Qua Auto Group consisted of six automobile dealerships, a car leasing company and a rental car company with annual revenues of approximately $85 million. In 1970, Mr. Qua became a founding director of ACCEL International Corporation, where he was, until his resignation from the board in January 2000, the Chairman of the Audit Committee and a member of the Executive Committee. Mr. Qua is a past director of the National Automobile Dealers Association and for twenty-one years he was a trustee of the National Automobile Dealers Association Retirement Trust and previously served in the role of chairman.
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Scott DePetris has been a director since April 2006. Since February 2002, Mr. DePetris has served as Senior Vice-President at Portware, LLC, a company specializing in the development and automation of securities trading systems. From April 2000 to January 2003, Mr. DePetris was co-founder and Vice-President of ExchangeLab, Inc, an intellectual property development company for financial services technologies. While at ExchangeLab, Mr. DePetris helped to orchestrate the sale of the company’s primary asset, Financial Auction Network, to a consortium of investment banks. From May 1999 to April 2000, Mr. DePetris was an associate at The Goldman Sachs Group, specializing in equity derivatives within the wealth management division.
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Carl de Stefanis has been a director since August 2006. From 1987 to the present, he has been the President of IVI International, Inc. He presides as the President or Managing Director over the six companies affiliated with IVI, which focus on providing real estate advisory services on behalf of private and institutional mortgagees and equity investors. His companies have six USA-based offices and affiliates in London and Paris. For the past two years, Mr. de Stefanis has been a member of the Public Affairs Committee of the London-headquartered Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the world’s oldest and largest consortium of real estate professionals with over 120,000 members located in over 100 countries.
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Christopher Ricciardi has been our Vice Chairman and a director since August 2006. Since February 2006, he has been the Chief Executive Officer of Cohen Brothers, LLC and its subsidiary, Cohen Brothers & Company, an investment banking and securities brokerage firm. From March 2003 until February 2006, Mr. Ricciardi was a Managing Director and Head of Global Structured Credit Products at Merrill Lynch. From March 2000 until March 2003, he was the head of U.S. Structured Credit Products at Credit Suisse First Boston.
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Director Independence
Our board of directors has determined that Messrs. Qua, Crisalli, DePetris and de Stefanis are “independent directors” as defined in the American Stock Exchange listing standards and Rule 10A-3 of the Exchange Act.