THE DE-TOUR HAS ENDED-- NEW PATH BEGUN

written 5/17/12

Dear all, friends, colleagues, CLIENTS and countrymen:
   BLOG NOTE FINALE FOR YOU  from my new home-                                                                                       
   The De-Tour has ended!  And a new Camino has begun.

To be short, sweet, brief, yet so much to say!

The Jefferies supported, Visiting Nurses Association Health Group Interim CEO de-tour has ended, and "the summer's here, and the time is right, for

"RACING IN THE STREETS"!

My last day at Jefferies was May 10th, 2012.  My first day at Jefferies, in 2008, the Fixed Income Division was the smallest division in the firm, and my last day it was the largest, and I am certainly proud of the small part I played in that.  Thanks to senior management and especially to my colleagues who I hired or joined me and took this journey to build a great client-focused franchise.  Along the way JEF became the #1 electronic trader of Investment Grade Corporates, by count and volume, in 2009 and 2010 combined.  JEF # 1? With all that competition, Wow, that's client focus!  I know I have left these clients in great hands w Dan O'D in sales and RichR and SteveG in trading and their respective teams, not to mention the great research and capital markets teams that didn't exist when I arrived.

Oh, and Fixed Income personnel grew from about 110 to....+500, again for my small part, I am thankful for the opportunity.
Best wishes to my JEF team, and to Tim Cronin, and Bill & Johan, and Rich & Brian.

And thanks to my 1700 colleagues at the Visiting Nurses, NJ's largest home care and hospice non-profit, where I had the privilege to serve as Interim CEO and Board Chair over the last four months.  I was pleased to volunteer my time, on leave from Jefferies, helping lead this mission-based organization that provides incredible home care, therapy, aide and support to over 100,000 New Jerseyan's every year, regardless of circumstance or ability to pay.  The VNA never says NO!  It was an incredible and humbling experience that I will cherish and remember in every step I take going forward. The patients we serve are your family, and the people who serve them, the VNA employees, are simply amazing.  Thank You!

And now it's time for "Racing in the Streets"!!!!!!.

This song, while most think of it as a drag racing car song, is truly about living, both out loud and inside, one's dreams and aspirations.  And the "summer is here, and the time is right, for me, to go racing in the streets".

So I've examined the landscape of electronic bond trading and transparency over the last decade +, much of which I have been heavily involved in developing from the original TRACE Bond Price Dissemination Commission to the various boards and companies that were part of that the transparency and electronic evolution.

E-TRADING, as we define it, truly exists in the equity market.  E-trading in the bond market works, to varying degrees, depending on the product and the avenue one chooses.  In most parts of the markets, it's better than it was, but there is no market-wide state-of-the-art offering, and most of
your choices today do not connect the bond trading population in a seamless, transparent, and anonymous central order book with live pricing. Really, not much has changed in the actual tools for trading fixed income products electronically, and yet the markets are going through incredible change.  Helping to lead this change is an emerging company called Bonds.com, Inc.

The investors/money managers are larger than ever, and sell-side dealers' capacity to deal with client flows is perhaps smaller than at anytime in the last 10 years (just a hair off the $40bn 10 year low in dealer inventories for corporates this past week's Fed report).   The Volker rule, Dodd-Frank, the Whale, dealer-inventories reduced, dealer proprietary trading eliminated, and all the while the ultimate search, daily, for finding the liquidity one needs to do your job, is occurring the same way
transactions have since 2005, most especially in investment grade and high yield corporate bonds.

A new tool, technique, and approach is needed to augment and empower, not replace, the current models.  It is already working, and has been, for quite some time.  And now I'm joining that team, Bonds.com, Inc., to join in the effort to bring advanced, state of the art all-to-all trading to the
bond market.

I look forward to seeing each and every one of you during the course of this summer, and do some "racing in the streets".

 --attached announcement in case you missed it--
Warmest personal and professional regards to all recipients, and best wishes for a great season of racing ahead!

regards

TOMMYT