JMP Group Announces Realignment of Senior Management

JMP Group Inc. (NYSE:JMP), an investment banking and alternative asset management firm, announced today the following changes to the company’s senior management structure:

• Carter D. Mack, previously director of investment banking and co-president of broker-dealer subsidiary JMP Securities LLC, has been appointed president of JMP Group.
• Mark L. Lehmann, director of equities and previously co-president of JMP Securities, has been appointed president of JMP Securities.
• Craig R. Johnson, formerly president of JMP Group, has been named vice chairman of JMP Group and chairman of asset management subsidiary Harvest Capital Strategies LLC.
• Kent Ledbetter, formerly director of corporate finance at JMP Securities, has been appointed director of investment banking and named to JMP Group’s executive committee.

"While we have been very successful in achieving our financial objectives over much of the past decade, JMP has evolved and its needs have changed,” said Joseph A. Jolson, the company's chairman and chief executive officer. "In particular, better clarity and direction are imperative for a firm with diverse businesses, more than 200 people in multiple offices, and revenues that have nearly doubled in the last few years. Beginning this past April, with the hope and belief that the worst of the down cycle was behind us, we spent considerable time and effort thinking through the future management roles that would best position JMP to take full advantage of the opportunities created by the growth initiatives we undertook during the ‘Great Recession.’ I am very pleased with the outcome and am more optimistic than ever before about JMP’s future.”

Carter Mack is a co-founder of JMP Group, serving as director of investment banking since 1999 and as president of JMP Securities since 2007. He is a member of the company’s board of directors. Prior to founding JMP Group, Mack served as a managing director in the financial services investment banking group at Montgomery Securities, now Banc of America Securities, from 1996 to 1999. He previously spent five years in investment banking at Merrill Lynch focused on financial institutions. During his career, Mack has been involved in corporate finance and merger and acquisition transactions totaling more than $40 billion in value.

Mark Lehmann joined JMP Group in 2003 and has served as director of equities since then and as president of JMP Securities since 2007. He is a member of the company’s board of directors. Prior to joining JMP Group, Lehmann was a managing director at U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, where he initiated and managed that firm’s middle-market sales effort. He previously served as both the global director of institutional sales and the global director of equity research at Banc of America Securities after working as an institutional salesperson at that firm and its predecessor, Montgomery Securities, for ten years.

Craig Johnson joined JMP Group in 2002 and served as president of JMP Securities until 2007, when he became president of JMP Group. He was formerly a founding member of Saw Island Asset Advisors, an alternative investment firm specializing in hedge fund investments that was acquired by Harvest Capital Strategies in 2003, and continues to be co-portfolio manager of the JMP Masters fund. Johnson spent twenty years, from 1980 through 2000, at Montgomery Securities and its successor, Banc of America Securities, most recently as director of global institutional sales and a member of that firm’s executive committee.

Kent Ledbetter joined JMP Group in 2004 as a managing director. He has served as JMP Securities’ head of real estate and lodging investment banking and, since 2007, as director of corporate finance. Prior to joining JMP Group, Ledbetter was in the real estate investment banking group at Lehman Brothers, based in London and San Francisco. He was previously a senior vice president in real estate investment banking at PaineWebber Incorporated. During his 19-year career, Ledbetter has been involved in more than $18 billion of public debt and equity capital raising transactions and more than $10 billion of domestic and international mergers and acquisitions.

About JMP Group

JMP Group Inc. is a full-service investment banking and asset management firm that provides investment banking, sales and trading, and equity research services to corporate and institutional clients and alternative asset management products to institutional and high-net-worth investors. JMP Group operates through three subsidiaries: JMP Securities, Harvest Capital Strategies and JMP Credit Advisors. For more information, visit www.jmpg.com.