GEROVA Financial Group, A New Specialty Reinsurance Company, Appoints Tore Nag As Chief Operating Officer

Chairman and CEO Marshall Manley of GEROVA Financial Group, Ltd., formerly Asia Special Situations Acquisition Corp., (NYSE Amex: CIO) today announced that Tore Nag has joined the company as Chief Operating Officer. In addition, Michael P. Grant was appointed Vice President, Special Assistant to the Chairman and CEO. They will join Gary T. Hirst, the previously announced President.

In introducing the new officers, Manley noted that the team leading GEROVA has extraordinary depth of experience in insurance, hedge fund operations, banking and marketing.

Chief Operating Officer Tore Nag will be responsible for overseeing GEROVA’s loan portfolios to middle market companies and the expansion of GEROVA’s direct lending operations. Prior to joining GEROVA, he was a senior banker at Nordea Bank, Sweden, and its predecessor, Christiania Bank og Kreditkasse, Norway, for 24 years. At Christiania Bank, he had full P&L responsibilities across Corporate and Commercial Banking, Capital Markets, Asset Management, Private Banking, Treasury, International, Banking Production, Cash Management and IT. He was responsible for restructuring its banking units in Luxembourg and Hong Kong, restoring them to profitability. From 1996 to 2006, he managed the US operations of Christiania Bank and Nordea Bank. During his tenure he repeated his earlier successes, turning operating losses in the U.S. in 2001 into annual profits of approximately $50 million by 2005. Christiania Bank was founded in 1848.

Vice President and Special Assistant to the Chairman and CEO, Michael Grant, has extensive experience in the financial services industry, including insurance, investment banking, and private equity. Most recently, he was a Vice President at DMB Capital Partners, a private equity firm, as an investment professional and fundraiser. Prior to that, he worked in investment banking at Merrill Lynch in both the Financial Institutions and Private Equity Funds groups managing M&A transactions, equity and debt financings, and private placements. He has also served as a Vice President and Relationship Manager at Aon Risk Services in the M&A Origination group. He holds a BS in Finance from Penn State University and an MBA from the Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management.