Investor News

Dearborn, Mich. Dec. 12 –CRO (Corporate Responsibility Officer) magazine has named Ford Motor Company to a newly released top ten list. Ford is ranked number four, highest among the automobile manufacturers in the “10 Best Corporate Citizens by Industry 2007” report in the “CRO’s 10 Best” in the Autos & Vehicles sector.

“We are honored to be recognized by CRO Magazine for our corporate social responsibility efforts,” said John Viera, director, Sustainable Business Strategies Office, Ford Motor Company. “Since we see sustainability as core to our business success, we have been working to develop metrics, targets and milestones to be explicitly integrated into our business plan. CRO’s recognition is one indicator that our efforts are paying off.” The bimonthly publication contracted with IW Financial, a Portland, Maine-based research firm specializing in environmental, social and governance issues, to analyze the citizenship efforts of large-cap, publicly traded companies in almost a dozen sectors. CRO and IW Financial evaluated the most influential U.S. public companies in eight categories: Environment, Climate Change, Human Rights, Employee Relations, Corporate Governance, Lobbying, Philanthropy and Financial. The category rankings were then averaged to determine the “CRO's 10 Best” companies for each industry.

“We saw this exercise as a valuable way to decipher companies’ performance on things like governance and sustainability issues, especially when looking at how they did when measured against the companies that they duke it out with in the marketplace,” said CRO Editor-In-Chief Dennis Schaal.

“Ford Motor Company’s inclusion among “CRO’s 10 Best” means the company’s citizenship efforts, based on the metrics considered, were at least several notches above many of the other companies in that industry,” Schaal added.

In this installment of “CRO’s 10 Best,” the magazine covers six specific industries: Auto & Vehicles; Paper; Technology Hardware; Technology Software; Transport; and Travel & Lodging. An earlier report published in CRO’s September-October issue analyzed the Chemical, Energy, Financial, Media and Utilities industries.

“CRO's 10 Best Corporate Citizens by Industry 2007” expands upon CRO's annual “100 Best Corporate Citizens,” which will appear in CRO's January-February 2008 issue.

Companies considered for “CRO’s 10 Best” predominantly were drawn from the Russell 1000 Index, although IW Financial and CRO went beyond that index to other publicly traded companies in some sectors where the pool of companies wasn’t large enough. All of the companies had to be headquartered in the U.S. to be included.

For “CRO’s 10 Best” report visit www.thecro.com.