Southport Announces Creation of Financial Services Practice
Former Vice President of Citigroup's Commercial Cards Division to Lead Practice Area

Herndon, VA, January 2, 2007 - Southport Services Group, LLC, a management and IT consulting company specializing in business intelligence, announced today the addition of Kat Sumida to lead its financial services practice.  In this role, Mr. Sumida will be responsible for defining and leading the implementation of best-practice business intelligence applications and consulting programs designed to address the specific reporting and analysis needs of financial services companies.

"The addition of Mr. Sumida, with his 15+ years of experience providing reporting solutions to leading global financial services institutions, will enable us to provide our customers with a more complete consulting offering that combines industry-specific business intelligence strategy and planning expertise with deep technical expertise in the areas of architecture, design and implementation," said Jim Butz, Principal and co-founder of Southport.

Prior to joining Southport, Mr. Sumida served as Vice President - Product Manager for Citigroup's Commercial Cards and Commercial Payments division, where he was responsible for managing the development and implementation of a client reporting solution for Diner's Club North America's commercial purchase card program.  Before that, Mr. Sumida was Vice President - Product Technology Integration at Citigroup where he was responsible for product definition, product development and deployment of a client reporting application for Citibank Commercial Cards to over 10,000 end-users representing 300 clients.  Other positions held include Director, Third Party Vendor Management for Visa International, Director of Retail and Operations Support at Visa International, managing partner at Nine Dot Solutions and various executive consulting positions for Fortune 500 companies.