JC Flowers invests $100 million in The Kessler Group

Boston, Massachusetts—The Kessler Group, a pioneer in the affinity marketing industry and a leading credit card industry investment banking firm and investment funds affiliated with J.C. Flowers & Co. LLC, a private equity fund focused on the financial services sector, have teamed up to develop a business focused on investment opportunities in the credit card industry.

The Kessler Group management and affiliates of J. C. Flowers & Co. LLC will invest $100 million for a minority stake in the privately-owned Kessler Group. Leveraging its 25-year track record of providing breakthrough solutions to the credit card industry, The Kessler Group will invest these funds in innovative marketing initiatives—including funding the origination of new customer accounts—for Kessler's marketing clients. In conjunction with this transaction, The Kessler Group is launching Kessler Capital Corporation, its principal investment arm, which will be run by Jonathan Sandler, currently Vice Chairman and CFO of The Kessler Group.

"I have known Howard and his team at The Kessler Group for almost 15 years and have been impressed by their accomplishments," said J. Christopher Flowers, Managing Director at J.C. Flowers & Co. "My partners and I are very pleased to have The Kessler Group as part of our family of companies and are enthusiastic about utilizing our capital to invest in and augment their best-in-class partnership, marketing and investment banking capabilities."

Commenting on the transaction, Kessler Group Chairman and founder, Howard Kessler, said, "I consider J.C. Flowers & Co. to be the premier investor in the financial services industry. We are delighted that Chris and his colleagues are now part of The Kessler Group team, and vice versa."

About The Kessler Group
The Kessler Group is a privately-owned financial services firm based in Boston specializing in partnership development, credit card marketing and portfolio acquisitions. The Kessler Group employs its unique combination of marketing and transaction expertise to create innovative solutions for its clients in the credit card, consumer finance and insurance industries. The firm employs over 280 associates in Boston, San Francisco, Washington DC, Hong Kong, London, Mexico City, Sydney and Toronto. Founded in 1979, The Kessler Group pioneered the affinity credit card concept and has created and marketed over 6,000 affinity and cobranded card programs for many of the leading partnership marketing card issuers in the world. Through its marketing subsidiary, the firm manages the production of approximately 1.5 billion pieces of direct mail per year and through its investment banking group, has managed over 350 credit card transactions, working with virtually all leading credit card issuers, as buyers and sellers, in the United States and the United Kingdom. To learn more about Kessler, visit www.kessler.com.

About J.C. Flowers & Co.
J.C. Flowers & Co. LLC, based in New York, is a private equity firm focused solely on the financial service sector. Its latest fund has over $7 billion in commitments from investors.