According to the Company’s FORM 10-Q For The Quarterly Period Ended April 29, 2006, the Company, the Individual Defendants, the plaintiff class and the vast majority of the other approximately three hundred issuer defendants and the individual defendants currently or formerly associated with those companies approved a settlement and related agreements (the “Settlement Agreement”) which set forth the terms of a settlement between these parties. Among other provisions, the Settlement Agreement provides for a release of the Company and the Individual Defendants for the conduct alleged in the action to be wrongful and for the Company to undertake certain responsibilities, including agreeing to assign away, not assert, or release, certain potential claims the Company may have against its underwriters. In addition, no payments will be required by the issuer defendants under the Settlement Agreement to the extent plaintiffs recover at least $1 billion from the Underwriter Defendants, who are not parties to the Settlement Agreement. To the extent that plaintiffs recover less than $1 billion from the underwriter defendants, the approximately three-hundred issuer defendants are required to make up the difference. On April 20, 2006, JPMorgan Chase and the plaintiffs reached a preliminary agreement for a settlement for $425 million. The JPMorgan Chase settlement has not yet been approved by the Court. However, if it is approved, the maximum amount that the issuers’ insurers will be potentially liable for is $575 million and Sycamore’s maximum financial obligation to the plaintiffs pursuant to the Settlement Agreement would be less than $2 million. On February 15, 2005, the Court granted preliminary approval of the Settlement Agreement, subject to certain modifications consistent with its opinion. Those modifications have been made. On March 20, 2006, the Underwriter Defendants submitted objections to the settlement to the Court. The Court held a hearing regarding these and other objections to the settlement at a fairness hearing on April 24, 2006, but it has not yet issued a ruling. There is no assurance that the court will grant final approval to the settlement.

As summarized by the same SEC filing, beginning on July 2, 2001, several purported class action complaints were filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against the Company and several of its officers and directors (the “Individual Defendants”) and the underwriters for the Company’s initial public offering on October 21, 1999. The complaints were consolidated into a single action and an amended complaint was filed on April 19, 2002. The amended complaint, which is the operative complaint, was filed on behalf of persons who purchased the Company’s common stock between October 21, 1999 and December 6, 2000. The action against the Company is being coordinated with approximately three hundred other nearly identical actions filed against other companies. Due to the large number of nearly identical actions, the Court has ordered the parties to select up to twenty “test” cases. To date, along with sixteen other cases, the Company’s case has been selected as one such test case. As a result, among other things, the Company will be subject to broader discovery obligations and expenses in the litigation than non-test case issuer defendants. On October 9, 2002, the court dismissed the Individual Defendants from the case without prejudice based upon Stipulations of Dismissal filed by the plaintiffs and the Individual Defendants. This dismissal disposed of the Section 15 and Section 20(a) claims without prejudice, because these claims were asserted only against the Individual Defendants. On October 13, 2004, the court denied the certification of a class in the action against the Company with respect to the Section 11 claims alleging that the defendants made material false and misleading statements in the Company’s Registration Statement and Prospectuses. The certification was denied because no class representative purchased shares between the date of the initial public offering and January 19, 2000 (the date unregistered shares entered the market), and thereafter suffered a loss on the sale of those shares. The court certified a class in the action against the Company with respect to the Section 10(b) claims alleging that the Company and the Individual Defendants defrauded investors by participating in a fraudulent scheme and by making materially false and misleading statements and omissions of material fact during the period in question. The Underwriter Defendants sought leave to appeal this class certification decision and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has accepted the appeal.

The complaint charges defendants with violations of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 for issuing a Registration Statement and Prospectus (the"Prospectus") that contained materially false and misleading information and failed to disclose material information. The Prospectus was issued in connection with Sycamore's initial public offering of 7,475,000 shares of common stock at $38.00 per share that was completed on or about October 21, 1999. The complaint alleges that the Prospectus was false and misleading because it failed to disclose (i) the Underwriter Defendants' agreement with certain investors to provide them with significant amounts of restricted Sycamore shares in the IPO in exchange for exorbitant and undisclosed commissions; and (ii) the agreement between the Underwriter Defendants and certain of its customers whereby the Underwriter Defendants would allocate shares in the IPO to those customers in exchange for the customers' agreement to purchase Sycamore shares in the after-market at pre-determined prices.