Sky Financial Group Divests Collection Agency Subsidiary

[Bethesda, MD] Kaulkin Ginsberg Company (Kaulkin) today announced the sale of Sky Asset Management Services, Inc. (SAMSI), a Tampa, FL-based subsidiary of Sky Financial Group, Inc. (NASD:SKYF), to Superior Credit Services (Superior). Terms of the sale were not disclosed.

SAMSI provides collection and billing services to retail credit grantors, commercial creditors, health care providers, and the government, with an emphasis on check collections. The majority of its clients are national in scope. Sky Financial Group, a financial services holding company with approximately $8 billion in assets, elected to sell SAMSI because of the unit’s recent losses and in order to focus on its core business lines.

?We had to jump over a lot of hurdles to complete this transaction,?according to Brian Greenberg, who led the deal for Kaulkin. ?Now that it’s done, both parties seem pleased with the deal. Our client has shed this non-core business and the buyer can benefit from expansion into a new geographic market, and from the national clients that were coming aboard at the time of the sale.?

Superior, based in Fort Walton Beach, FL, is a newly established collection agency run by industry veteran John Maloney, who built his previous agency, Bomar Credit, into a leading player servicing banks and other credit grantors before selling to Compass International in 1998.

Kaulkin initiated this transaction and served as advisor to the Sky Financial Group. Kaulkin Ginsberg Company is the leading advisor to the debt collection and related industries. Since 1992 the firm has advised on more than 75 agency transactions with deal values well over $1 billion. In addition to managing acquisitions and divestitures for clients, Kaulkin Ginsberg’s suite of services includes locating strategic or financial partners, securing debt and equity funding, strategic planning consulting and research. For information on Kaulkin visit www.Kaulkin.com, and for information on the debt collection industry, visit www.CollectionIndustry.com.