NEW YORK – March 10, 2010 – Houlihan Lokey, an international investment bank, announced that Robert E. Hyer, Jr. has joined the firm as a Managing Director and head of the Financial Technology Group.

Mr. Hyer, a 23-year veteran investment banker formerly with Greenhill & Co. and Citigroup, will lead the practice, focusing exclusively on companies in the financial technology industry. He will be joined by Bruce Urbanek, a financial technology specialist formerly with Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.

“We continue to aggressively add senior talent to the firm and this is another example of that happening in a key area,” said Scott Adelson, Senior Managing Director and global co-head of Corporate Finance. “Rapid change in the financial technology industry is presenting new opportunities and Bob’s history of successful advisory work in this area will be instrumental to our growth going forward.”

Before joining Houlihan Lokey, Mr. Hyer was a managing director at Greenhill & Co., where he advised KKR on the $27 billion acquisition of First Data, and Ceridian in their proxy defense and $5.2 billion sale to TH Lee. During his 19-year tenure at Citigroup, Mr. Hyer established Citi’s global electronic services group, advising clients including Certegy, PayPal, E*Trade, Fiserv, MasterCard, Concord EFS, Heartland, MoneyGram and NYCE.

Mr. Hyer is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and the University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business. He is registered with FINRA as a General Securities Principal (Series 7, 24 and 63) and a Limited Representative – Investment Banking (Series 79).