FirstCity Financial Completes Purchases Under Stock Repurchase Plan

FirstCity Financial Corporation (Nasdaq: FCFC) announced today that it has completed the purchase of stock under its stock repurchase plan. The Board of Directors initially approved the purchase of an aggregate of 1,000,000 shares of the Company’s common stock on August 11, 2006, and increased the stock repurchase plan by an additional 500,000 shares on January 31, 2008. The Board of Directors authorized the purchases to be made through August 30, 2009.

FirstCity has purchased 1,500,000 shares of its common stock pursuant to the stock repurchase plan for an aggregate purchase price of $10,922,517 during the period from August 14, 2006 through October 10, 2008, at an average cost of $7.28 per share (including 439,170 shares purchased since June 30, 2008 at an average cost of $3.87 per share). FirstCity currently has 9,831,937 shares of common stock outstanding.

James T. Sartain, President and CEO, said, "FirstCity believes that the recent accumulation of shares was a great opportunity to build shareholder value and will benefit all shareholders. We continue to believe that our common shares are undervalued at current prices, but while not ruling out the possibility of an additional buyback program in the future, we believe that FirstCity should reserve its liquidity for investment opportunities presented to FirstCity in light of current economic conditions."

FirstCity Financial Corporation is a diversified financial services company with operations dedicated to portfolio asset acquisition and resolution with offices in the U.S. and with affiliate organizations in Europe and Latin America. FirstCity common stock is listed on the NASDAQ Global Select Market.