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February 19, 2009 – Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP (“Coughlin Stoia”) (http://www.csgrr.com/cases/sib/) today announced that a class action has been commenced in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas on behalf of purchasers of Stanford International Bank Ltd. (“SIB”) certificates of deposit (“CDs”) or shares in SIB’s Stanford Allocation Strategy proprietary mutual fund wrap program (“SAS”) between February 19, 2004 and February 17, 2009 (the “Class Period”).

If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than 60 days from today. If you wish to discuss this action or have any questions concerning this notice or your rights or interests, please contact plaintiff’s counsel, Darren Robbins of Coughlin Stoia at 800/449-4900 or 619/231-1058, or via e-mail at djr@csgrr.com. If you are a member of this class, you can view a copy of the complaint as filed or join this class action online at http://www.csgrr.com/cases/sib/. Any member of the putative class may move the Court to serve as lead plaintiff through counsel of their choice, or may choose to do nothing and remain an absent class member.

The complaint charges SIB, its affiliated investment advisors and certain of its officers and directors with violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. SIB is a private international bank domiciled in St. John’s, Antigua, West Indies.

The complaint alleges that during the Class Period, SIB and its affiliated investment advisors, Stanford Group Company (“SGC”) and Stanford Capital Management, LLC (“SCM”), fraudulently peddled CDs that promised rates of return far above those available from other banks. Defendants claimed that these superior returns were possible because SIB invested its deposits rather than loaning them. To ensure that depositors could redeem their CDs, defendants assured them that SIB’s investments were liquid and diversified. In fact, nearly 80% of SIB’s investments were concentrated in just two high-risk, illiquid categories: private equity and real estate. Now that the real estate and private equity markets are in free fall, many of those who purchased SIB’s CDs have recently been informed that they cannot redeem them.

The complaint also alleges that defendants misled investors in SIB’s SAS program. Specifically, defendants picked a handful of mutual funds that had performed extremely well in 1999-2004 and claimed the returns of those high-performing funds as the historical returns of the SAS program. Defendants also inflated the claimed returns of the SAS program in 2006 and 2007. Investors, misled by defendants’ claims of historic returns, have fared very poorly in the SAS program.

In addition, according to the complaint, when investors became concerned that SIB might have invested in Bernard Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme, SIB sent them each a letter unequivocally stating that “Stanford International Bank did not have any exposure to the Madoff Fund.” Just two days before this letter was sent, an SIB analyst informed all three of the individual defendants, including R. Allen Stanford (“Stanford”), that SIB had invested in Meridian, a New York-based hedge fund that used Tremont Partners as its asset manager. Tremont, in turn, had invested a portion of Meridian’s – and SIB’s – money with Madoff.

On February 16, 2009, the SEC filed a complaint against SIB, SGC, and SCM, as well as against defendants Stanford, James M. Davis and Laura Pendergest-Holt, accusing them of participating in a “massive, ongoing fraud.” According to press reports, the FBI has also begun an investigation. Since then, there has been a “run” on SIB, with investors flying to Antigua from all over the world to try to recover their money. In the meantime, authorities were forced to conduct a manhunt for defendant Stanford before he was finally tracked down in Virginia.

Plaintiff seeks to recover damages on behalf of all purchasers of SIB CDs or shares in the SAS program during the Class Period (the “Class”). The plaintiff is represented by Coughlin Stoia, which has expertise in prosecuting investor class actions and extensive experience in actions involving financial fraud.

Coughlin Stoia, a 190-lawyer firm with offices in San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Boca Raton, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and Atlanta, is active in major litigations pending in federal and state courts throughout the United States and has taken a leading role in many important actions on behalf of defrauded investors, consumers, and companies, as well as victims of human rights violations. The Coughlin Stoia Web site (http://www.csgrr.com) has more information about the firm.