Good day, and welcome to the Assured Guaranty Limited Second Quarter 2012 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. (Operator Instructions). I would now like to turn the conference over to Robert Tucker, Managing Director, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning and thank you for joining Assured Guaranty for our second quarter 2012 financial results conference call. Today’s presentation is made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. It may contain forward-looking statements about our new business and credit outlooks, market conditions, credit spreads, financial ratings, loss reserves, financial results, future rep and warranty settlement agreements and other items that may affect our future results. These statements are subject to change due to new information or future events, therefore, you should not place undue reliance on them as we do not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise them, except as required by law. If you’re listening to the replay of this call or if you’re reading the transcript of the call, please note that our statements made today may have been updated since this call. Please refer to the Investor Information section of our website for our recent presentations, SEC filings, most current financial filings, and for the risk factors. Turning to the presentation, our speakers today are, Dominic Frederico, President and Chief Executive Officer of Assured Guaranty Limited; and Rob Bailenson, our Chief Financial Officer. After their remarks, we will open the call to your questions. As the webcast is not enabled for Q&A, please dial into the call if you’d like to ask a question. I will now turn the call over to Dominic.

Thank you, Robert and thank you all for joining Assured Guaranty for our second-quarter 2012 earnings call. Our positive operating results in the second quarter reflect our strategic versatility and the strength of Assured Guaranty’s business model. While the reliable stream of revenue from our $5.6 billion of unearned premium reserve led a solid base of income, we wrote new business generating $50 million of PVP and created additional shareholder value through our alternative strategic programs. Our business production in the second quarter concentrated on U.S. public finance where our gross par written totaled $4.7 billion, up 28% from the second-quarter of 2011 and PVP reached $47 million, up 5% from last year’s second quarter. Our premium rates have held for over the last year but compared with last year’s second-quarter PVP, PVP grew less than the par insured. This is because our premium rates are applied to total insured debt service. That is principal and interest to calculate PVP. As average 30-year yields have decreased about 125 basis points from where they were in last year’s second quarter, total debt services reduced, and this is the basis of premium we recorded in the quarter. The fact that we insured over 350 new issues in the quarter despite adverse market conditions is testimony to the fundamental demand for our guaranty. Our market penetration remained consistent with prior quarters. In our target market bonds with single A underlying credit quality, our market penetration in the second quarter remained reasonably strong as we insured 29% of the transactions and 10% of the par sold despite the low interest rate environment. Turning briefly to the structured finance and international markets, our near term structured finance opportunities are primarily in non-cash bilateral trade with large financial institutions looking to manage their capital more efficiently.…

Thank you, Dominic and good morning to everyone on the call. Operating income for the second quarter was $114 million or $0.61 per share compared with the $143 million or $0.76 per share in the second quarter of 2011. These results reflect the scheduled amortization of the insured portfolio and in particular structured finance in-force book of business. In the second quarter of 2012, net earned premiums included refundings of $46 million and accelerations of $22 million compared with refundings of $21 million in the second quarter of 2011. The record low interest rate environment was one of the main drivers of the increase in refundings as issuers refinanced their debt obligations. Accelerations in the second quarter of 2012 were due to the termination of certain international infrastructure transactions. It’s part of our capital enhancement strategy to terminate contracts that have disproportionately high capital charges and reduced leverage. Total economic loss development was $89 million net of a benefit of $16 million due to foreign exchange rate movement. Changes in discount rates have a significant impact on loss – during the second quarter of 2012 risk free interest rates declined up to 90 basis points pending on tariff – the declining risk free rates resulted in an increase of approximately $63 million in economic losses in the quarter. However this is non-indicative of additional credit impairment nor is it reflective of our own investment yield. Aside from this, there was no significant loss development in RMBS transactions. The effective tax rate on operating income varies from quarter to quarter due to the amount of income in different tax jurisdictions and was 30% for the second quarter of 2012. A higher percentage of the company’s loss development occurred in non-taxable jurisdictions, which resulted in higher effective tax rate in the second…

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Mark Palmer at BTIG. Mark Palmer – BTIG: Could you please walk us through the process of challenging stock in this bankruptcy, what that entails and what the timetable is?

Sure. As you know Chapter 9 has various criteria eligibility, principle among them are things like you have to prove your insolvency. Another principle is that there has to have been a good faith attempt to negotiate settlement with creditors and I think are you are going to read through other people that are going to contest the filing, that's probably going to be the two most quoted criteria failures that people believe were not affected in this recent filing. Mark Palmer – BTIG: And can you also provide an update on where things stand in negotiations with Jefferson county?

Well, as you know Jefferson county is already in bankruptcy. There has been a number of decisions made by the judge. Regretfully most of them are being appealed. One such is removing the state appointed receiver, another was challenged to what were “net revenues” that were available to pay debt service. As you might know we received a very favorable ruling a couple weeks ago that the judge ruled that you could not put things like depreciation, legal fees etc. into the calculation but once again that’s being appealed. So all I can tell you is that Jefferson County we had a deal on the table that the creditors and we thought what authority could agree to that was not approved by the commissioners. Hopefully someday we'll get back to something along those lines, but the bankruptcy process and these challenges and the decisions will appear to take a very, very long time.

The next question comes from Brian Meredith at UBS. Brian Meredith – UBS: A couple of questions here for you. The first one, I am just curious on Build America Mutual, I know it clearly kind of validates the market of your sum (ph) – but I am wondering do you think given the mutual structure may have a somewhat depressing impact on pricing our there?

Well, I don’t think they should. I mean obviously they have got return hurdles like everyone else. S&P in their review of the company put a threshold out there for the premium index that they have to achieve. In our market those create a floor and ceiling over pricing and therefore that establishes a level of discipline. So I think we’re quite confident that pricing will be maintained and remember the biggest pressure on our pricing is really interest rate. Brian Meredith – UBS: Right. And then the second question I have noticed dividend activity out of AGM and AGC is what was on AG Re year to date has been up fairly significantly over last year. I am wondering what the dividend activity is forced specifically out of AGM and AGC?

Well dividends coming out of the subsidiaries into the parent company just create capital flexible for us. It allows us to obviously do things like manage capital through buybacks, allows us to potentially fund new operations. So it’s really creating as we keep talking about our capital flexibility that we strive to achieve as we look to further address the challenges that we see in the marketplace and take advantage of the opportunities that we see in the marketplace.

In addition, Brian, as you know we've participated in the equity units and the remarketing of debt and we used that cash to actually pay off the debt and actually remarket those notes ourselves and net cash went up to the holding company too in exchange for stock. Brian Meredith – UBS: And then any on that topic too, with respect to Mayak (ph), any kind of changes or thoughts there as far as usage?

Well, we considered too and we need to rename this thing, because I am thinking that’s already here in Mayak. I put a contest out to our employees to come up with a better name. So let’s call it Newco but obviously we believe Newco is an incredibly strong competitive of tool for us, as well as a potential mechanism to generate further market participation. And as such we will continue to make the necessary plans and finalize our planning on that to see if that opportunity continues to present itself that we will execute and take advantage of it.

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Tucker for any closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. I’d like to thank everyone for joining us on today’s call. If you have additional questions, please feel free to give us a call. My number is listed on the press release. And we hope everyone has a nice weekend. Thank you very much.

The conference has now concluded and thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.