Hanmi Financial Corporation Retains Cappello Capital Corp. to Explore Strategic Alternatives

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Hanmi Financial Corporation (Nasdaq:HAFC) announced today that its Board of Directors has authorized the Company's management team to explore a broad range of strategic alternatives. Cappello Capital Corp. has been engaged as the Company's financial advisor in this process.

Jay S. Yoo, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Company, commented, "We are actively exploring all strategic alternatives to satisfy our regulatory orders and meet our business objectives."

There can be no assurance that the review of strategic alternatives will result in the Company changing its current business plan, pursuing a particular transaction or completing any such transaction. The Company does not expect to update the market with any further information on the process unless and until its Board of Directors has approved a specific transaction or otherwise deems disclosure appropriate.

About Hanmi Financial Corporation

Headquartered in Los Angeles, Hanmi Financial Corporation is a parent corporation to Hanmi Bank which provides services to the multi-ethnic communities of California, with 27 full-service offices in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, San Francisco, Santa Clara and San Diego counties, and one loan production office in Washington State. Hanmi Bank specializes in commercial, Small Business Administration ("SBA") and trade finance lending, and is a recognized community leader. Hanmi Bank's mission is to provide a full range of quality products and premier services to its customers and to maximize shareholder value. Additional information is available at www.hanmi.com.

About Cappello Capital Corp.

Cappello Capital Corp., headquartered in Santa Monica, California, is a boutique investment bank and a registered broker/dealer. It has a focus on providing corporate advisory services to both private and public companies including buy/sell side M&A, strategic advisory, financial restructuring and private placements of equity and debt. Cappello's principals have significant cross-border transactional experience in excess of $100 billion for companies in over 50 countries in North America, Latin America, South America, Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. For more information about the Cappello Capital Corp., please visit www.cappellocorp.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements, which are included in accordance with the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as "may," "will," "should," "could," "expects," "plans," "intends," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "potential," or "continue," or the negative of such terms and other comparable terminology. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to differ from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statement. These factors include the following: failure to maintain adequate levels of capital and liquidity to support our operations; failure to identify potential partners for a strategic transaction with the Company; the effect of regulatory orders we have entered into and potential future supervisory action against us or Hanmi Bank; general economic and business conditions internationally, nationally and in those areas in which we operate; volatility and deterioration in the credit and equity markets; changes in consumer spending, borrowing and savings habits; availability of capital from private and government sources; demographic changes; competition for loans and deposits and failure to attract or retain loans and deposits; fluctuations in interest rates and a decline in the level of our interest rate spread; risks of natural disasters related to our real estate portfolio; risks associated with SBA loans; failure to attract or retain key employees; changes in governmental regulation, including, but not limited to, any increase in FDIC insurance premiums; ability to receive regulatory approval for Hanmi Bank to declare dividends to Hanmi Financial Corporation; adequacy of our allowance for loan losses, credit quality and the effect of credit quality on our provision for credit losses and allowance for loan losses; changes in the financial performance and/or condition of our borrowers and the ability of our borrowers to perform under the terms of their loans and other terms of credit agreements; our ability to successfully integrate acquisitions we may make; our ability to control expenses; and changes in securities markets. In addition, we set forth certain risks in our reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2008 and current and periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission thereafter, which could cause actual results to differ from those projected. You should understand that it is not possible to predict or identify all such risks. Consequently, you should not consider such disclosures to be a complete discussion of all potential risks or uncertainties. We undertake no obligation to update such forward-looking statements except as required by law.


    Source: Hanmi Financial Corporation