The top priority of the Company’s Board of Directors is the ethical management of the Company for profitable, long-term growth.  To that end, the Board has adopted various policies and practices to align management and shareholder interests. Some of the more noteworthy of these corporate governance policies include:

• The Company does not make loans to directors or executive officers.
• The Company does not backdate or reprice options.
• The Company has a Governance and Nominating Committee that directs and reviews the Company’s governance practices.
• The Governance and Nominating Committee annually evaluates the performance of the Board, its Committees and each of the directors.
• The chair of the Governance and Nominating Committee serves as the Company’s lead director and chairs board executive sessions in which members of management are not present.
• While we encourage employees to own Company stock through their retirement plans, the plans allow employees to diversify their vested holdings.
• The directors and executive officers as well as the Company may not trade in the Company’s securities during any “blackout period” in which participants in the Company’s individual account plans (e.g., 401(k) plan, Joe Share Plan, etc.) are not permitted to trade their shares of Company stock held in such plans.
• The Company’s code of conduct was adopted to reinvigorate and renew our commitment to the Company’s longstanding standards for ethical business practices.