Analysts' Memo Sparks Major Changes at Salomon Smith Barney; Vault.com's On the Street Newsletter Uncovers Bold Retention Efforts.

Business Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 6, 2000

Posts on Vault.com's message boards opened a window into Salomon Smith Barney's ongoing attempts to curb defections to the Internet industry. Vault.com's Career Newsletter for Finance, On the Street, today released an in-depth investigation on this growing trend.

In an effort to curtail the mass exodus of analysts, Salomon Smith Barney asked one analyst to compile a memo addressing the concerns of his peers. The analyst's efforts resulted in a detailed, sometime scathing, 37-point memorandum suggesting improvements ranging from expanded gym hours to major changes in management attitudes.

Within a week of the memo's distribution, the firm held focus groups with the senior bankers in charge of the analyst program and initiated several improvements. The author of the memo later posted a message explaining his role in creating the memo, commenting that "this is an extremely productive start to a longer process that many other banks on the street would do well to emulate."

The memo and management's response has sparked heated discussion on several prominent Investment banking message boards. Employees at Lehman, Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, and Credit Suisse First Boston benchmarked SSB's amendments in order to encourage similar changes at their respective banks. The popularity of such discussions within Vault.com's community indicates that Salomon Smith Barney's bold initiatives may reverberate throughout Wall Street.

To view the memo visit: http://www.vault.com/forums/mb.cfm?mode=topicmsg&Thread_ID= 19799&product_id=315&objectgroup_id=240&PASSEDCOBRAND= none&nav=2,3&msgset=3#Message64616

About Vault.com

Vault.com (formerly VaultReports.com), The Workplace Network(TM), is the Internet's leading destination for career information and management. Vault.com's mission is to help professionals advance their careers through "insider" career information, online networking, online courses, job listings, and more. Just named one of the "100 Best Sites for 2000" and "the best way to scope out potential employers" by Yahoo! Internet Life, Vault.com provides "insider" guides on over 3,000 companies and 70 industries. It also offers the much-praised Electronic WaterCooler(TM), the Internet's first-ever network of expert-moderated message boards for employees. In addition, Vault.com offers a free job board that contains over 200,000 job postings - one of the largest job databases on the Internet. Vault.com was founded in 1996 by H.S. Hamadeh, Samer Hamadeh, and Mark Oldman, together recently named to the "Silicon Alley 100: New York's 100 Most Influential Internet Executives."