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NEW YORK CITY-iStar Financial Inc. chairman and CEO Jay Sugarman adopted a new stock trading plan to sell a portion of his company stock over time as part of a strategy for asset diversification and liquidity. Under this plan, Sugarman may sell up to 480,000 shares of the REIT with the sales beginning in September 2005 and ending in July 2007.

The plan contemplates sales of up to 12,000 shares during each of the first six months, and up to 24,000 shares during each of the remaining months. Any shares not sold during a particular month will be added to the number of shares available for sale in subsequent months. The total shares available for sale under the plan represent approximately 13.4% of the total number of shares held by Sugarman,

The trading plan was adopted in accordance with guidelines specified by the Securities and Exchange Commission's Rule 10b5-1 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Rule 10b5-1 allows corporate officers and directors to adopt written, pre-arranged stock trading plans when they do not have material, non-public information. If Sugarman completes all the planned sales of shares, he would beneficially own approximately 3.1 million shares of iStar Financial's outstanding stock including exercisable stock options.