Rick Navarro Joins Goodyear as Vice President, Business Development

AKRON, Ohio, Oct. 31, 2003 -- The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company has named Rick Navarro, vice president, business development, effective Nov. 1, 2003. He will report to Clark E. Sprang, senior vice president, business development.

Navarro will be responsible for developing and coordinating strategies to achieve business growth and profitability through acquisitions, divestitures, mergers and joint ventures for Goodyear.

"Rick is a proven leader with a 25-year track record of success in business development in numerous industries," said Robert J. Keegan, chairman and chief executive officer, in making the announcement. "His focus has been on creating sustainable competitive advantages that generate superior returns for shareholders.

"Rick's experience in using Six Sigma process improvement tools will play an important role in our drive to make it an integral part of the Goodyear culture."

Navarro joins Goodyear from Solectron Corp., where he was senior vice president of corporate development. Prior to joining Solectron in 2002, he had been vice president, corporate development for the aerospace business of Honeywell International Inc. since 1997.

Before moving to Honeywell in 1993, Navarro held leadership positions involving business development and mergers and acquisitions for Citicorp; Bank of America and Citibank, N.A. He began his career in 1972 as an engineer for Rockwell International, where he led structural design work on the Space Shuttle, Skylab, the Soyuz Docking Module and the Apollo Command Module.

Navarro earned a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1972 and a Master of Business Administration degree in finance from Stanford University's Graduate School of business in 1975.

Goodyear is the world's largest tire company. Headquartered in Akron, Ohio, the company manufactures tires, engineered rubber products and chemicals in more than 85 facilities in 28 countries. It has marketing operations in almost every country around the world. Goodyear employs about 92,000 people worldwide.