Joel Brotman, CMB Joins The Leader Mortgage Company

Tuesday December 1, 10:36 am Eastern Time

Company Press Release

SOURCE: First Defiance Financial Corp.

CLEVELAND, Dec. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- James L. Hook, CMB, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Leader
Mortgage Company of Cleveland, Ohio announces that Joel A. Brotman, CMB has joined the company as an Executive Vice President. Mr. Brotman's responsibilities will include the management of retail and wholesale residential mortgage loan originations, production operations, secondary marketing and product development. He comes to The Leader with nearly 30 years of experience in mortgage banking.

``Joel has come to The Leader to expand our lending business beyond our well-established niche in state and locally funded affordable housing finance programs to become a force in mainstream mortgage lending, including a wide variety of federally-related and other popular programs,'' said Mr. Hook.

Mr. Brotman has a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a J.D. from Rutgers University Law School. Most recently, he was a Senior Vice President with Bank of the Hudson, Poughkeepsie, NY, responsible for the bank's residential mortgage lending activities. Mr. Brotman is a former president of the Mortgage Bankers Association of New Jersey and a former member of the Board of Governors of the Mortgage Bankers Association of America. He currently resides in Pawling, New York with his wife, Vivienne Weil Brotman. The Brotmans will be relocating to the Cleveland area.

The Leader Mortgage Company is a full-service mortgage banking company, headquartered in Cleveland and founded in 1960. The Leader has been a wholly-owned subsidiary of First Federal Savings of Defiance, Ohio since July 1, 1998. First Federal is a subsidiary of First Defiance Financial Corp. (Nasdaq: FDEF - news), Defiance, Ohio .

SOURCE: First Defiance Financial Corp.