Pittsburgh, PA (December 12, 2006) In the fall of 2006, Grant Street Group completed the successful installation of TaxSys^® in three Florida Counties, representing 445,055 parcels and 72,036 active Occupational Licenses.

Pittsburgh, PA (December 12, 2006) In the fall of 2006, Grant Street Group completed the successful installation of TaxSys^® in three Florida Counties, representing 445,055 parcels and 72,036 active Occupational Licenses.

TaxSys is a state of the art full service tax collection and billing system for Real Estate, Tangible Personal Property, Occupational Licenses and Tourist & Development Taxes. It is now operational in the Florida Tax Collector Offices in Okaloosa, Osceola and St Lucie counties.

"You have produced an amazing product in an incredibly short period of time" said Patsy Heffner, Tax Collector for Osceola County, "Your responsiveness, your consistently positive attitude, and your willingness to listen and adjust to our needs has been both recognized and appreciated." A Branch Manager echoed her positive response, "I have been working on our old program for 14 years and before the morning was over I was able to do more on TaxSys, in a shorter amount of time, than I ever could on our old program. Thank you for giving us TaxSys, I love it"!

Several more TaxSys installations in Florida Tax Collector offices are planned throughout 2007.

The Bond Buyer - Letter to the Editor

December 11, 2006

Nearly two years ago (Jan. 25, 2005) The Bond Buyer published my letter to the editor: "Technology is the Ultimate Solution to GIC Bid Rigging."

The Bond Buyer - Letter to the Editor

December 11, 2006

Nearly two years ago (Jan. 25, 2005) The Bond Buyer published my letter to the editor: "Technology is the Ultimate Solution to GIC Bid Rigging." In it I voiced my concerns regarding the old-fashioned, non-transparent process by which bids for GICs are received (i.e., phone or fax) and likely abuses - including undisclosed payments to GIC brokers and bogus bid certifications.

These abuses are not only crimes against federal and local governments, but also against the vast majority of industry participants, who have earned their right to a good reputation. Recent headlines regarding investigations by various federal agencies of bid rigging, payoffs, etc., cast a shadow over all municipal finance professionals involved in GIC transactions.

As a result of these investigations, some have called for additional enforcement. But more regulation is not the answer; not even self-regulation. What is the answer? For the past 10 years we have been telling issuers and GIC brokers that open electronic GIC auctions are the best way to assure transparency and integrity in the bidding process. Nonetheless, the response of some GIC brokers - who figure prominently in recent headlines - has been to argue that bidders bid more aggressively in the old-fashioned, closed-phone or fax auctions of the type that are now the subject of investigation.

One of these GIC brokers has even procured a legal opinion saying open electronic GIC auctions do not satisfy the bid-rigging safeguards built into the current rules. This is self-serving nonsense. There have been 339 successful electronic open GIC auctions since 1999 involving hundreds of issuers, financial advisors, bond counsels, and GIC providers; all doing their part to make the GIC market more efficient, competitive, transparent, and honest.

Internet technology and the open-auction format ensure that the GIC is solicited and awarded in an arm's length-manner, with all bidders having equal opportunity to bid, and no bidder having the opportunity to get a "last look." Also, and equally important, the process is transparent. The issuer and bond counsel witness all bidding activity as it takes place and receive a permanent record of it.

GICs are a perfectly suitable investment for bond proceeds. We all have a responsibility to ensure that the nefarious deeds of a few bad actors do not burden the whole municipal GIC market with disrepute and more regulation. The next time you are involved in a GIC solicitation, use the technological means at your disposal to make it a competitive, transparent, and honest process.

Dan Veres
Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
Grant Street Group

Grant Street Group awarded $38.4 million for patent infringement by Thomson and i-Deal.

PITTSBURGH, PA (October 6, 2006) Following a trial lasting 6 and a half days, a 6-member jury found media giant Thomson Financial and affiliated company, i-Deal, LLC guilty of willful infringement of a patent belonging to Pittsburgh-based Grant Street Group (formerly, MuniAuction).

Grant Street Group awarded $38.4 million for patent infringement by Thomson and i-Deal.

PITTSBURGH, PA (October 6, 2006) Following a trial lasting 6 and a half days, a 6-member jury found media giant Thomson Financial and affiliated company, i-Deal, LLC guilty of willful infringement of a patent belonging to Pittsburgh-based Grant Street Group (formerly, MuniAuction). The jury also awarded Grant Street Group damages in the amount of $38.4 million for its lost profits resulting from the infringement. The patent (No. 6,161,099) issued by the US Patent & Trademark Office in 2000 covers a unique auction process for new-issue, fixed-income financial instruments, including municipal bonds, invented in 1996 by Grant Street Group Co-Founders, Myles Harrington and Dan Veres.

After having its licensing offer rejected, Grant Street Group filed suit against Thomson in June 2001 in Federal Court in Pittsburgh. "It took over 5 years and cost us more than a million dollars to get here", said Myles Harrington, a Co-Inventor and President of Grant Street Group, "but we had a good lawyer, a prudent judge and a very conscientious jury who gave us a fair hearing." "It may be expensive, but the system does work", he added.

The jury found that Thomson and i-Deal had infringed Grant Street's patent more than 12,000 times since January 2001 -- and did so willfully -- by copying a method of auctioning municipal bonds electronically that was invented by Harrington and Veres and protected by special rights granted to the inventors by the US Patent & Trademark Office.

In addition to declaring the patent valid, the jury sanctioned Thomson and i-Deal with a finding of "willfulness", which gives the judge discretion to increase the damage award that must be paid by the defendants to Grant Street by up to 3 times the amount already awarded by the jury (i.e., $115.2 million).

About Grant Street Group (www.GrantStreet.com)
Grant Street Group, with headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is the country's first and most active Internet auction house for new-issue, fixed income financial instruments. Grant Street designs, develops and licenses customized auction web sites used by municipal and federal agencies as well as by global financial institutions serving as trustees, custodians, broker-dealers, exchange agents, auction agents, and remarketing agents.

CONTACT:
George Faines
412-391-5555, ext. 365
Grant Street Group
The Allegheny Building, Suite 1800
429 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15219

Pittsburgh, PA (June 29, 2006) Zions Bancorporation announced today that it has successfully completed the first auction of Employee Stock Option Appreciation Rights Securities (ESOARS).

These new securities were offered to provide a market basis that might be used to help Zions estimate the fair value of stock options granted to employees in order to comply with Statement of Financial Accounting Standards (SFAS) No. 123R, which requires companies to expense these options. The current valuation practice is to use modifications of standard option pricing models. However, these models were not designed to estimate the value of employee stock options and may not accurately reflect their actual value.

"We are pleased with the results of this auction, and the interest it generated," said W. David Hemingway, senior investment officer and executive vice president. "We now intend to have discussions with the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding the use of this valuation method for expensing employee stock options. Ultimately, we hope to be able to help other option-granting companies use the method we have developed to obtain a market valuation of their option grants."

Zions Bancorporation is one of the nation's premier financial services companies, consisting of a collection of great banks in select high growth markets. Zions operates its banking businesses under local management teams and community identities through over 450 offices and 500 ATMs in 10 Western states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah and Washington. The company is a national leader in Small Business Administration lending and public finance advisory services. In addition, Zions is included in the S&P 500 and NASDAQ Financial 100 indices. Investor information and links to subsidiary banks can be accessed at www.zionsbancorporation.com.

Pittsburgh, PA (June 13, 2006) Last week, Grant Street Group completed its third year of hosting internet auctions of tax lien certificates.

In 2004, Grant Street's LienAuction was the first-ever web site to host tax lien auctions over the internet when four Florida counties Miami-Dade, Okaloosa, Orange and Volusia -- conducted sales. Since then, Grant Street has hosted internet auctions for counties in Arizona, Florida, and Maryland and the results have been overwhelming. "With LienAuction, we've been able to accomplish something no one else has been able to achieve: sell every certificate in an auction," said Grant Street's Wade Horigan, LienAuction Product Manager, "In Florida, we didn't just sell every certificate in one auction, we sold every certificate in seven out of thirteen Florida auctions this month over 129,000 certificates."

Results like these have helped keep Grant Street ahead of recent competitors. In 2006, Grant Street's LienAuction sites once again assisted in collecting more money for counties in Florida than all of its competitors combined. To-date, Grant Street has hosted successful auctions for over 315,000 certificates totaling more than $780 million.

Prior to LienAuction, bidders would gather in a public venue of the tax collector or treasurer's choosing, and bid on certificates one at a time. The auctioneer would select a certificate and bidders would shout out their bids. Typically, this process would take from several days to several weeks to complete. With the introduction of Grant Street's LienAuction, most auctions now take less than a day. "We were able to determine winners for batches of 2,500 individual certificates within seconds after an auction closed," said Horigan.

"We have received a tremendous amount of positive feedback from bidders," said Bernard Kane, Volusia County Director of Revenue, "add to that all the positive feedback from my office and you have a lot of people who love this product."

Since its inception, LienAuction has produced positive results for Citrus, Clay, Highlands, Lake, Leon, Marion, Miami-Dade, Okaloosa, Orange, Osceola, Palm Beach, St. Lucie, and Volusia Counties in Florida, as well as Baltimore, Maryland and Maricopa County, Arizona.

Pittsburgh, PA (May 16, 2006) West Virginia State Treasurer John Perdue and the affiliated Board of Treasury Investments conducted an on-line auction today, investing nearly $25 million in certificates of deposit with West Virginia banks.

Pittsburgh, PA (May 16, 2006) West Virginia State Treasurer John Perdue and the affiliated Board of Treasury Investments conducted an on-line auction today, investing nearly $25 million in certificates of deposit with West Virginia banks. The auction was held on West Virginia's private-label web site (www.BidWVauction.com) created by Grant Street Group. West Virginia joins 9 other states that utilize Grant Street's auction platform for their CD investments.

The $24.8 million represents a portion of $2.8 billion in state operating funds the BTI manages. BTI's Executive Director Glenda Probst said any official state depository with a West Virginia bank presence was able to participate.

"We hope to put some money into the economy of West Virginia," Perdue said, "by making available funds that banks may loan to working individuals. We thought nothing could be fairer than an on-line auction."

Quarterly auctions of $25 million will be held on the BidWVauction web site on the third Tuesday of February, May, August and November.

Pittsburgh, PA (March 23, 2006) Banner Health, one of the largest, non-profit healthcare systems in the U.S., utilized Grant Street Group's Internet auction platform to take competitive bids for the fixed rate component of an interest rate swap.

Pittsburgh, PA (March 23, 2006) Banner Health, one of the largest, non-profit healthcare systems in the U.S., utilized Grant Street Group's Internet auction platform to take competitive bids for the fixed rate component of an interest rate swap.

Three financial institutions participated in the open auction in which 61 bids were submitted. At the conclusion of the auction, Merrill Lynch had the first-place bid and was awarded 60% of the $425 million swap. Morgan Stanley, who agreed to match Merrill's bid, was awarded 40%.

Michael McAnder, Vice President of Managed Care and Treasurer, said he was extremely pleased with the results. "I see great value in inviting firms to compete in an open auction. By utilizing Grant Street's process, I believe we attained the best possible rate."

KaufmanHall, a consulting practice specializing in the healthcare field, served as swap advisor to Banner Health.

Pittsburgh, PA (February 16, 2006) The winners have been selected and the funds collected. The verdict: "It looks like it met all our hopes and dreams," Maricopa County Treasurer David Schweikert said of the county's first-ever Internet-based tax certificate sale.

Pittsburgh, PA (February 16, 2006) The winners have been selected and the funds collected. The verdict: "It looks like it met all our hopes and dreams," Maricopa County Treasurer David Schweikert said of the county's first-ever Internet-based tax certificate sale.

Grant Street Group, a Pittsburgh-based software company that specializes in customized software applications for financial institutions and government entities, was selected by Maricopa to host the auction using their LienAuction platform. To date, more than 180,000 tax certificates totaling over $418 million have been sold using LienAuction.

"This was our 16th tax certificate auction and it really could not have gone any better," said Wade Horigan, Grant Street Group's LienAuction Product Manager. "We are as happy with the outcome as David [Schweikert]."

Thanks in part to the LienAuction platform, Maricopa County was able to sell 86.4 percent of the liens offered, compared with 74.5 percent last year. The increase helped Maricopa collect an estimated $17 million in back taxes and clear more than 13,000 tax liens from its books during its first online auction.

In previous years, Maricopa's annual auctions attracted about 150 buyers who had to physically be on County premises in order to bid in the auction. This year, there were over 3,000 registrants and 900 participating bidders in the online auction.

"We had people from Europe; we had people from Asia; I know we had one from Hong Kong," Schweikert said of the auction participants. "What really surprised me was that the vast number of people were local."

Maricopa has decided to hold a follow-up auction with Grant Street Group for those certificates that were not sold in the initial auction.