Mr. Small: First Defiance Financial Corporation is a unitary thrift holding company that was formed in September 1995. That was a second step conversion; we had formed a mutual holding company in 1993. Prior to that, dating back more than 80 years, we operated as a mutual thrift based in Defiance, Ohio. First Defiance has transformed over the past three to five years from a traditional real estate lending operation business plan into a much more diversified business plan, which included a couple of acquisitions. The first one was in July 1998 when we acquired a mortgage banking company based in Cleveland, Ohio, called The Leader Mortgage Company. In 1998, we acquired a property and casualty insurance agency based here in Defiance, and then bought a second insurance office in September 1999 that specialized primarily in commercial lines and group health lines of business. Those have been merged into one insurance agency now that we operate under the holding company as First Insurance and Investments. Our bank unit is First Federal Bank of the Midwest. We operate under a federal savings bank charter and The Leader Mortgage Company is technically a subsidiary of the bank. We've diversified our lines of business and, within the core banking business at First Federal Bank, we've also diversified quite a bit. In the mid-1990s, we realized that for long-term survival, a traditional thrift business plan of being a portfolio real estate lender was not going to take us where we wanted to go, so we set out to develop a community bank operation. While still keeping a very strong presence in real estate lending (in fact, we hold the number one position in a couple of our markets), we implemented a diversification program that put a lot more emphasis on commercial lending. We did that by going out and finding good, qualified commercial lenders and bringing them on board to build our business. That initiative was launched in the spring of 1998, and today our commercial lending portfolio is actually larger than our real estate lending portfolio. It has really been the core of the growth of our banking operation. As a complement to the commercial business that we were getting into, we also added trust services at that time. Today, through our insurance division, we also offer investment services and financial planning for our customers.
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