Kodak Shares the Wealth with Employees

In order to allow employees to share in the rewards of improved performance, company officials at Eastman Kodak recently announced that the company will make a special grant of stock options to non-management employees worldwide.

Each regular, full-time and part-time, non-management employee of Eastman Kodak Company and most of its 70%-or-more-owned subsidiaries worldwide (approximately 80,000 people) will be awarded a non-qualified stock option to purchase 100 shares of common stock at a price to be determined by the close of market today.

Today's grant is the second that the company has made to its non-management employees around the world. A similar grant of options for 100 shares of common stock for each employee was made in April of 1998.

The company's philosophy in awarding these all-employee stock option grants is to make the creation of shareholder value a more direct role in employee compensation. The company feels that the interests of Kodak employees will be more aligned with the interests of shareholders with this stock option grant. In the U.S., the company also pays a wage dividend, which is a profit-sharing program based on economic value-added, a financial measure that typically aligns with the creation of shareholder value.