My name is Abigail and I will be your conference operator today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the Huntington fourth quarter earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks there will be a question and answer session. (Operator Instructions) Mr. Gould you may begin your conference.

I’m Jay Gould, Director of Investor Relations for Huntington. Copies of the Slides we will be reviewing can be found on our website www.Huntington.com and this call is being recorded and will be available as a rebroadcast starting about one hour from the close of the call. Please call the investor relations department at 614-480-5676 for more information on how to access these recordings or playback or should you have difficulty getting a copy of the Slides. Slides two and three note several aspects of the basis of today’s presentation. I encourage you to read these. Let me point out one key disclosure, this presentation contains both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures where we believe it help to understanding Huntington’s results of operations or financial position. Where non-GAAP financial measures are used the comparable GAAP financial measure as well as the reconciliation to the comparable GAAP financial measure can be found in this Slide presentation in its appendix, in the press release, in the quarterly financial review supplement to today’s earnings press release and in the related Form 10K filed earlier today, all of which can be found on our website. Today’s discussion, including the Q&A period may contain forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on information and assumptions available at this time and are subject to change, risks and uncertainties which may cause actual results to differ materially. We assume no obligation to update such statements. For a complete discussion of risks and uncertainties please refer to this Slide and materials filed with the SEC including our most recent Forms 10K, 10Q and 8K filings. Now, turning to today’s presentation. As noted on Slide Five, participating today are Steve Steinour, our duly elected Chairman, President and CEO; Don Kimble, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Tim Barber, Senior Vice President Credit Risk Management. Also present for the Q&A session is Nick Stanutz, Senior Executive Vice President of Auto Finance and Dealer Services and Mike Cross, Executive Vice President & Senior Commercial Lending Officer. Let’s get started.

This is my first opportunity to address you since joining Huntington and you need to know upfront that I’m excited about being here. These times are certainly challenging, perhaps the most challenging facing the industry and Huntington in decades. I have always found in times of great challenge great opportunities also emerge and I firmly believe that is true for Huntington. We have some issues to address which we’ll talk about today but, we’re up to the task. I hope that through our remarks you’ll come to the same conclusion. I’ve also made it a priority to meet with and get to know as many of you as my schedule will permit beginning with a round of visits in New York next Tuesday. So, let’s begin with the presentation. Turning to Slide Seven, I want to begin with a review of my initial impressions about Huntington as well as my perspective on key issues. Don will follow with a quick over view of fourth quarter financial highlights. This may be briefer than usual as I think it is important that Tim spend time walking you through the specifics of our Franklin actions as well as other credit performance information. I will share my 5Q priorities, what I hope to accomplish and focus on in the first 90 days with you and then I’ll close with brief comments about 2009 expectations. So, if we turn to Slide Eight, some of you may be wondering why anyone would want to be a bank CEO at such a time at this and for some banks I would certainly agree with that underlying sentiment but, for Huntington there’s a lot that’s attractive and exciting. First of all, Huntington’s overall strategic positioning as a local bank, a relationship bank, is one that I have found…

Turning to Slide 14, before detailing the quarter I think it important to put full year 2008 results in perspective. Our reported net loss for the year was $113.8 million or $0.44 per common share. These results were impacted by several significant items: first, $454.3 million or $0.81 per share of negative impact related to Franklin, all in the fourth quarter. This impact included $438 million of loan loss provision, $9 million of interest income reversal and $7 million of write offs related to interest rate swaps. These actions reduced the net exposure of Franklin to $520 million. Tim will review these actions in more detail later. Next, $215.7 million or $0.38 per share of market related losses including $197.4 million of securities impairment. Also, we had $0.09 EPS from events related to our holdings of Visa stocks including the impact of the IPO, the reversal of the indemnification reserves and related tax benefits. Finally, $0.06 of EPS negative impact from the combination of restructuring costs and other asset impairments. The net message for this Slide is the significance of the Franklin Credit impact to the year. Adjusted for this impact, our earnings would have been a $0.37 per share. Now, turning to the quarter, Slide 15 provides a summary of the earnings for this quarter. Our reported net loss per share for the quarter was $417.3 million or $1.20 per common share. These results were impacted by three significant items: first, the $454 million or $0.81 of negative impact for the fourth quarter charges for Franklin. Second, $141.7 million or $0.25 per share of market related losses including $127.1 million of securities impairment primarily related to our [all state] mortgage backed securities. The forecast of future loss levels for the underlying mortgage levels increased again in the fourth quarter…

Let me begin with a detailed review of our Franklin relationship. Slide 19 you have seen before. While the cash flow generated by the underlying collateral showed a declining trend over the first nine months of 2008 it did continue to exceed the requirements of the 2007 fourth quarter restructuring agreement. However, as you can see the level of cash flows declined significantly in the fourth quarter reflecting a more severe than expected deterioration in the overall economy during the quarter. In particular, principal payments associated with the first mortgage portfolios contracted as the availability of credit in the market was further reduced. A substantial amount of the monthly principal reduction has been associated with the sale of properties. So, the tightening credit scenario had a direct negative impact on cash flows. On the interest collections side there was a decline across all three segments but the decline was especially dramatic in the Franklin second mortgage portfolios as delinquencies continued to increase. While there was an increase in the level of OREO proceeds in December, that source has a high degree of variability from month-to-month. We observed performance in the fourth quarter coupled with the expectation that the severity of the economic downturn will further weaken the underlying borrower’s ability to pay as well as the value of the collateral resulted in a significant deterioration in the value of Franklin’s cash flow. As such, the revaluation of the future cash flows at the end of the fourth quarter led to the actions detailed on Slide 20. The $438 million additional provision was the result of some significant changes to the credit assumptions on the Franklin portfolio. Particularly affected was the Franklin’s second portfolio which showed a substantial increase in delinquencies and defaults in the fourth quarter. We are now assigning…

On Slide 27 let me share with you my expectations about 2009’s performance. First, as background we expect this to continue to be a challenging year and all year. While I’m hopeful the second half may be better than the first, in this environment we’re going to be guarded with a consistent outlook of a challenging year. As it relates to credit, we believe net charge off levels will remain elevated and that provision expense will continue to exceed net charge offs until we see the environment stabilizing and the economy improving. We also expect that net interest margin will remain under modest pressure. Deposit pricing is expected to remain aggressive in our markets which are among perhaps the most aggressive in the nation. I hope that at some point we’ll see Midwest deposit rates return to a more rational level but, we’re not planning on this happening. With the economy in the weakened state, cost associated with servicing delinquent loans are expected to increases. So, so much for the negatives. On the positive side we expect to realize a meaningful benefit from our expense initiatives and as I said earlier, more details to follow. We’ve continued to show success in growing core deposits and that’s expected to continue. We also expect to continue to grow our customer base in terms of taking market share and to improve our share of wallet. Lastly, we expect to see growth in core revenue. All in all a year with both challenges and opportunities. On Slide 28 shows key priorities for me in the next 90 days and as I stated at the outset we need to address the Franklin relationship as an investor concern and I hope we’ve done that today by articulating with you the basis for the decisions that have…

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Matthew O’Connor – UBS. Matthew O’Connor – UBS: It seems like you took a pretty big whack on Franklin here but as we think about the rest of the book I definitely would agree that the credit performance has held up better than most of the other banks out there. Obviously, the economy is very weak so there probably will be more pressure going forward but, how do you think about how meaningful reserves build could be looking in 2009?

Matt, this is my first full week here and there are many, many areas I just haven’t had a chance to get the opportunity to dig in to. So, the truthful answer is I don’t know. I don’t have an expectation other than a belief that having intensively reviewed Franklin over the last five days with the various members of the credit team that I was impressed by their knowledge and I certainly before I came here took a lot of comfort in the track record I saw over the first three quarters. Again, I can’t answer the question specifically but I do have some confidence about the organization and the quality of the book. Matthew O’Connor – UBS: I’m just trying to get a sense of what the organic capital build might be this year and I guess if we looked at what the stock is doing today combined with the capital ratio, the tangible common, it’s a little bit light here and the market is saying that you might need to raise capital or come up with kind of some other plans. You talked about building common capital, you talked about kind of everything being on the table so if you could provide I guess some more color on how this might play out in terms of addressing the capital ratio?

As far as our capital ratio again, we feel that our tier 1 and total capital ratios are very strong. If you looked at our combined tangible equity ratio it’s still very strong and we believe we have taken action to address the common with our dividend cut that we’ve taken this quarter. And, as Steve said, we’re taking other actions to make sure we can enhance the earnings going forward to make sure we can build that capital in the future as well. Matthew O’Connor – UBS: I asked the same question to one of the other Ohio banks today about being open to additional government assistance at this point and they seem to imply everything was kind of on the table so I wanted to ask you guys the same question.

Matt, as far as your question there of whether or not we’ll be looking to the more TARP type of capital or other resources? Matthew O’Connor – UBS: Correct.

Well right now as we stand we are comfortable with our credit position. We don’t know any additional terms as far as any additional programs that might be out there. We’ve heard that they might be considering at some point in time purchasing assets in the future and as we get more details of any types of programs along those lines we’ll have to evaluate that at that time but, we’re not right now contacting the Treasury or other parties to see what additional assistance might be available.

Your next question comes from Dave Rochester – Friedman, Billings, Ramsey. Dave Rochester – Friedman, Billings, Ramsey: Focusing on the credit trends can you talk about what industries and geographies drove the increase in C&I charge offs in the fourth quarter? It looked like growth in that segment really accelerated outside of Franklin.

There really was not a pattern or a trend to that it was across the footprint. There were a couple of significant dollars, what I call significant dollars but the rest of it really was spread pretty much across our footprint. There were no industry trends or concentrations embedded in that. Dave Rochester – Friedman, Billings, Ramsey: Are you seeing more deterioration perhaps in the Sky portfolio versus the legacy Huntington portfolio with regard to C&I?

We don’t really at this point think a whole lot about the difference between the Sky and the legacy Huntington portfolio. It’s been our books for 18 months now and our treatment at this point is the same so that’s how we’re moving forward with that. Dave Rochester – Friedman, Billings, Ramsey: I just want to make sure I understood your Franklin evaluation, in terms of the 40% haircut, how did you calculate the current value of the collateral? Was that just an appraisal situation where you just appraised all the collateral or did you use certain home price indices to get to that valuation?

We specifically got a valuation on every one of the first mortgage properties. That’s how we got to the value side of things.

In the fourth quarter.

Your next question comes from Heather Wolf – Merrill Lynch. Heather Wolf – Merrill Lynch: Just a quick follow up on the 60% value, is that adjusted for foreclosure costs and also discounts that you may have to take to sell out of foreclosure?

Yes, Heather that 60% is a realizable value so that would be net cash to Franklin that would go directly to pay down the principal on our loans.

Keep in mind too Heather that does not include any value associated with seconds and as Tim said earlier that’s receiving $5 to $6 million a month cash flow and that does not assign any value to the servicing platform as well which we continue to believe is a real value to the relationship as well. Heather Wolf – Merrill Lynch: Can you help us think through how this cram down legislation could impact Franklin if it gets passed?

Heather we don’t know exactly what’s going to come out but at 60% valuation off of current, as in fourth quarter individual asset valuations, we think we’re in a relatively reasonable zone here and we should be okay for almost anything you can think of coming out of cram down at this point.

Your next question comes from Tony Davis – Stifel Nicolaus. Tony Davis – Stifel Nicolaus: Just so we can read the glass correctly Tim, I recall the excess cash flows I think last quarter, third quarter on Franklin was like $13 million or so. Do you have a number that you can fill in on that slide?

Are you talking about Slide 19? Tony Davis – Stifel Nicolaus: Yes, the one that’s just a chart that we can’t read.

I can help you with that. On a cumulative basis throughout the entire year it’s about $50 million including the fourth quarter [inaudible] that you see. Tony Davis – Stifel Nicolaus: Tim, you also saw nearly a quadrupling link quarter I think in charge offs in the commercial real estate book and I just wonder if you can give us some color on that by segment retail versus industrial and some thoughts on the severity of risk classifications you’re seeing there?

Let me just make sure we’re on the same page regarding the increase in commercial real estate. Tony Davis – Stifel Nicolaus: Charge offs on Slide 22, 11 to 38.

Similar to my answer on the C&I side, it was across the regions. The commercial real estate portfolio was clearly concentrated in the single family builder segment of the portfolio. We continued to see the stress in that portfolio that we’ve seen and talked about over the course of the last two or three quarters.

The largest charge off there for the quarter Tim was a commercial real estate retail project that we had talked about before that was around $7 million?

It was about $5 million and that was the property we’ve talked about in Indianapolis. Tony Davis – Stifel Nicolaus: Nick is there, I’d ask him a question too, on the indirect business I guess Nick what has happened to auction sale prices over the last quarter? And, can you give us some color on the watch list I guess in the dealer services portfolio too?

Tony clearly with the dramatic decline in car sales that we saw in the fourth quarter, car sales rates at 25 year lows there clearly was just a lack of demand at the auction. If you look at the [inaudible] market index, that index fell from the beginning of the year to the end of the year by over 18 points and I think [Contose] and [Webb] and Manheim were reporting that for the fourth quarter car values were down 5%, 6% depending on which segment you were in. I will tell you they also are reporting as recently as a week ago that they have seen a surprising increase in prices as we’ve entered the first 15 days of January. Whether that is sustainable or not remains to be seen but it’s been surprising that we’ve seen this spring rebound because dealers are clearly focused on selling used cars in this environment not new cars so there is some optimism there. Tony Davis – Stifel Nicolaus: Just one final thing to make sure – after this reorganization Franklin remains qualified as a servicer in all states and are you still hopefully that perhaps additional contract awards here from the FDIC or other banks might be in the offing?

You’re referencing Franklin and the servicing platform and we do expect that to be the case.

Your next question comes from Terry McEvoy – Oppenheimer. Terry McEvoy – Oppenheimer: A question, in the press release you talked about getting these house account borrowers, I was wondering if you could talk about the window of opportunity? Is that a short window, do you expect more of those? Then in terms of the deposits, have you been getting deposits as part of these new relationships that are coming to Huntington?

I think we believe the window is open and continues to open and the successes we’ve had in getting additional credit business the deposits have absolutely come with those relationships. Terry McEvoy – Oppenheimer: With regards to your outlook or just the elevated level of charge offs in provisionings, as you look at the five lending categories that you break out in the presentation today, is there any one or two categories that’s really driving that statement or is it really a combination of all of them showing further deterioration.

I think it’s a general combination of all of them however, we clearly as I tried to go through in the comments, feel relatively good about our auto business and our home equity business. But again, given the economy, given the stresses in our markets, it really is an across the portfolio discussion. Terry McEvoy – Oppenheimer: Then when do you conduct your annual goodwill impairment test? Have you taken any goodwill write downs related to the Sky Financial acquisition?

Our goodwill impairment test is conducted during the fourth quarter so we did complete that before we finalized the earnings and we have not taken any impairment charge on goodwill associated with Sky or any other acquisition.

Your next question comes from Greg Ketron – Citigroup. Greg Ketron – Citigroup: Just a question around Franklin, I’m not sure how much detail or explanation you can go in to but it seems clear that if you could exit the Franklin relationship, mind the value of the servicing platform it might even provide some needed capital at the end of the day. Any thoughts or discussion or color you can provide around looking at Franklin and how you might be able to mine the value of the servicing platform or potentially pair back the size of the relationship?

The charge we took we believe gives us the flexibility to approach the portfolio from a number of different perspectives and there are ongoing restructuring conversations with Franklin which we would hope to conclude in the foreseeable future and around which we would hope to optimize the recoverable value from all aspects of the relationship. Greg Ketron – Citigroup: In regards to the servicing platform is that something that could be done separately and sold or acquired by somebody that would provide some additional value?

The nature of our relationship with Franklin I think has to be addressed first and there are more comprehensive conversations first and negotiations that have been occurring. If they are fruitful, that would potentially allow Franklin to be in a position to solicit third party business. I think as you know there is just enormous demand so that platform could grow very quickly and to a very significant extent. That’s part of how we focus on overall value in the relationship. But, there are no agreements or commitments at this point. The negotiations will continue but hopefully conclude in the foreseeable future. Greg Ketron – Citigroup: So the way to think about it is more of an angle of leveraging the current platform, expanding that and generating additional proceeds in the future?

Yes.

Your next question comes from [Eric Connerly – Roco]. [Eric Connerly – Roco]: My question is about the auto loan segment, if as is being discussed in the press, one or more of the big three cut back their bottom quarter to a third of low volume dealerships, how significantly would that affect first your volumes of loans to floor plans and second to the indirect auto lending business?

We tend to focus most of our originations with the larger dealer groups where you’d have more scalability, you make that call at the dealership level, you can generate more loans than dealers obviously are selling very few cars. So, with less dealers being in the footprint we would suggest that the stronger dealers will obviously pick up that change in market share from being fewer dealers in the footprint. From the wholesale side again, that inventory traditionally gets absorbed by the bigger dealer at the end of the day and of course dealers have been clearly cutting back inventory in light of the environment we are in and they will continue to focus less on new cars and more on used cars which is then the key to the success. The dealers that are making money clearly in this environment are the ones that are selling used cars without the new car demand being there.

I’d just add on to that, we don’t really think that there is any direct connection between a reduction in manufacturing capacity and the performance of our indirect auto loan book. We’ll continue to originate to high quality borrowers, manage that as we have in the past. There may be fewer cars sold over the course of a given year but we’re going to attract our portion of that and its going to remain high quality.

Your next question comes from [Vick Ye – Owl Creek Asset Management]. [Vick Ye – Owl Creek Asset Management]: My question relates to how you think the end game plays out in respect to TARP? I know cutting the dividend probably conserves a lot of cash but you’re non-performing assets are rising even in your core business excluding Franklin and there’s a lot of TARP money that you have your capital structure. Do you ultimately intend to repay that or is it probably going to remain outstanding? How do you see the long term sort of game plan in terms of rebuilding capital and sort of growing the capital base?

The TARP capital can’t be repaid for the first couple of three years and it’s 5% capital until the end of the fifth year. We’ve seen severe cycles before, perhaps not quite as severe as this but ’89 and ’90 were very difficult for the industry and by ’93 or ’94 things were moving ahead quite nicely. So, I do believe in the span of the next five years the economy will be a lot different than it is today and that will put us in a position with a lot of different options to address repayment of the TARP in that original five year time frame. [Vick Ye – Owl Creek Asset Management]: What is the right tangible common equity ratio that you’re sort of targeting? And, is it something you can get there by just sort of earning your way back or is there some sort of capital raise that may be necessary?

Historically what we’ve focused on is our tangible equity ratio because we’ve included in that the convertible preferred issuance so that would add another 111 basis points to our tangible capital ratio. With that we’d be in the 5% plus range and we would typically target something closer to the 6% or 6.25%. We will review that with Steve over time here as well and make sure we access that but we think we can earn back to that level with the reduction in dividend over time as well.

This concludes the question and answer portion of today’s call. I’ll now turn the call back over the presenters for any closing remarks.

I appreciate all of you and your interest in Huntington. Thank you for participating today. We look forward to talking to you in the coming days and next quarter. Thank you.

This concludes your conference call for today. You may now disconnect.