As I said this is the just the first quarter of our re-imagined products and creative, but we feel we are solidly moving in the right direction. Further as stated in our press release this morning, with the help of Aeon, our majority shareholder, we have been working closely with our lender banks to convert our uncommitted working capital lines of credit to committed working capital lines. Mizuho Hold Bank and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation SMBC, after review and endorsement of our strategic plan, including our decision to sell J. Jill have agreed to convert their existing uncommitted $75 million and $50 million working capital lines of credit to committed lines; subject to the completion of due diligence and documentation. We are currently engaged in similar discussions with other lender banks, who have indicated their support of this direction.

This is a significant step forward for our company, further validating our strategy and direction. We feel good about the progress we are making and appreciate the on going support that Aeon and our lenders are offering as we deal with our turnaround in the midst of these most challenging times. We have the strategy and we have the financing to see it through.

I will now turn it over to Ed to review the financials, and then I will be back with some closing comments.

Ed Larsen – Chief Financial Officer

Thanks Trudy. Let me give the details of our third quarter financial performance beginning with our results from continued operations, which include Talbots Misses, Petites, Women’s, Collection and Accessories & Shoes businesses. Total sales from continued operations for the third quarter were $357 million compared to $414 million last year on a comparable basis. Retail store sales were $303 million compared to $345 million last year. Comp store sales declined 13.9% for our 13 week period, driven primarily by a decline in transactions. Direct marketing sales, which include catalog and Internet were $54 million compared to $69 million last year. This decline was primarily due to a shift in our catalog mailing strategy, where we moved our key holiday/gift book out of the third quarter and into the fourth quarter.

Third quarter cost of sales, buying and occupancy was 68.4% of net sales versus 64.4% last year. Operating gross margin improved 100 basis points over last year, but it was fully offset by de-leverage of buying and occupancy cost with a negative 13.9% comp. Selling, general and administrative expenses of third quarter were $127 million and 35.6% of net sales versus $139 million and 33.5% of net sales last year, again reflecting de-leverage from negative comps of 13.9%. We’ve made excellent progress in our goal to streamline our cost structure with important improvements in markdown optimization, increased IMU, reduced and reallocated marketing spend, closure of our Men’s, Kids and U.K. organization and headcount reductions in both our corporate office and field operations.

Net interest expense for the quarter was $4.9 million versus $8.7 million last year reflecting both long-term and short-term interest cost. Our average borrowings for the quarter were reduced to $415 million down from $551 million last year and our average interest rate for the quarter was 3.8% versus 5.8% last year. Income taxes for the quarter were a benefit of $8.4 million at a rate of 36.4%. We ended the third quarter with a net loss from continuing core operations of $14.8 million or $0.28 per share.

Now, let me talk about our results from discontinued operations, which includes Talbots Kids, Men’s and U.K. operations and the J. Jill Brand. We are currently in the process of valuing J.Jill’s net assets, including preliminary numbers in today’s press release. The fair value of these net assets is shown in net assets held for sale and net liabilities held for sale on the balance sheet. Final numbers will be included in our third quarter 10-Q, which will be on file with the SEC by December 11, 2008. So, as reported in our press release this morning, we’ve recorded preliminary non-cash impairment charge related to the write-down of the J. Jill intangible and tangible assets of approximately $138 million after tax or approximately $2.57 per share. Preliminary third quarter net loss from discontinued operations was $152 million or $2.85 per share, compared to last years net loss of $0.16 per share on a comparable basis.

The breakdown of discontinued operations between Kids, Men’s U.K., Jill operations and Jill impairment was included in Exhibit I, which is attached to our press release and on our company’s website under Investor Relations, financial highlights. We will post today the reclassification schedules for continuing and discontinued operations to the third quarter of fiscal 2008 with comparisons to last year. In the third quarter, weighted average shares outstanding were approximately $53.5 million. Turning to the balance sheet; we ended the third quarter with total accounts receivable of $207 million versus $225 million last year, comprised entirely of Talbots charged receivables. Talbots charge penetration increased to 48% of sales this year versus 45% last year and finance charge revenue increased to $11.7 million in the third quarter, compared to $10.2 million last year or a gain of 15%. The performance of our credit card portfolio remained solid and stable with results significantly better than what we’ve seen reported throughout the industry. We believe this reflects the overall quality of our customer base. Our average customer piker store is at over 760, so the upper 10% of all U.S. consumers and while bad debts were up modestly year-to-date to $2.6 million versus $1.9 million last year, they’ve remained well contained.

Based on a year-to-date performance, write-off performance and account receivable at the end of third quarter, we expect total bad debts for the year to be approximately $3.6 million to $3.7 million. While our current portfolio remained strong, we continue to see growth in new accounts as well with increase of 8% year-to-date over last year. Total merchandise inventories for the Talbots brand at the end of the quarter were $226 million, down 23% compared to last year’s $294 million. This reflects strong inventory management, it consist of flow of new merchandise and timely markdowns. We ended the quarter with accounts payable to our vendors of $144 million versus $98 million last year, which is up 45% due to the shift in open account terms with our vendors.

At the end of the quarter, loans payable to banks were $106.5 billion versus $107.2 billion last year. This is against available working capital lines of credit of $215 million and we have a compliance with our debt covenants at the end of the third quarter. Moving to capital expenditures, we spent a total of $30 million year-to-date versus $43 billion last year and our 2008 capital plan is at $53 million for the Talbots brand, which excludes all J. Jill spending and during the period, we paid a quarterly cash dividend of $0.13 per share.

Before I turn it over to Trudy, let me comment on a few of the items beginning with a current status of our pension plan. The company does maintain a defined benefit pension plan, which was posed to new participants on January 1, 2008. We are making required periodic payments to our pension fund in fiscal 2008, which will total approximately $11.5 million. We anticipate that our required periodic payments to the pension plan for fiscal 2009 will be approximately $14 million to $15 million and finally, as we look ahead to fiscal 2009, we will conservative in our posture. We are in the early stages of our budgeting process. We will continue to operate on lean inventories and continued tight expense control. We’ll be scaling back on expenses for next year, with our target capital spending at less than $40 million.

Now, let me turn it back to Trudy for some closing comments.

Trudy Sullivan

Thanks, Ed. These are clearly challenging times we are all navigating through. That said, we will continue to manage the business by focusing on what is in our control and by preserving capital and liquidity. We have a brand with a tremendous future and the financial support to get us through to that future. We are very pleased to have the ongoing support of Aeon, a majority shareholder and believe that the commitment from those Mizuho bank and SMBC is a significant step forward for our company and we will continue to rigorously work with our other lender banks so that they may fall suit quickly. This action not only serves to validate our strategic direction, but gives us a greater stability during these difficult times, so we can focus on restructuring our business.

Finally, I want commend our associates who rise to the occasion everyday. Their response to managing in these times is mature, professional and forward thinking. Although, we expect the environment to be very challenging through the next year, we remain confident in the strength of our Talbots brand, our overall strategy and the steps we are taking to position our company for near and long-term improvement and profitable growth.

Thank you and now we would be very happy to answer your questions.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Ladies and gentlemen at this time we’ll open the call for the question-and-answer session. Please press”*1” on your push button phone if you’d like to ask a question. In order to allow time for everyone’s enquiry to be answered please limit your question to one and we’ll pause for just one moment please. Your first question comes from Jennifer Black with Jennifer Black & Associates.