Partnership with Merrill Lynch Recognized by The Association for Quality and Participation STAMFORD, Conn., May 8, 2002 - Merrill Lynch Private Client Services, with close collaboration with Pitney Bowes (NYSE: PBI), was the recipient of the first place prize Gold Award at the National Team Excellence Competition held during the 24th Annual Association for Quality and Participation (AQP) Spring conference. The competition included 21 teams from around the nation that presented their individual organization's performance and quality improvement initiatives. The gold medal team, Mail Inserter Efficiency Partnering, led by Tony DeMartino of Merrill Lynch, utilized the efficiency model developed by Tony Luna, Reliability Engineering Manager, and implemented by Mark Frohlinger, Senior Reliability Engineer and Robert Dombroski, Site Coordinator at Merrill Lynch -all from Pitney Bowe's Document Messaging Technologies in Danbury, Connecticut. The team pulled together members from 5 partnering suppliers including Westvaco, Wallace, IBM and Cunningham. The overall goal of the project was to improve statement processing productivity and delivery of service to Merrill Lynch's clients. Their efforts to correct the root causes yielded the following improvements for Merrill Lynch: * Reduction of machine jams and stoppages by 40% * Improvement of machine throughput by 27% * Reduction in reprocessed statements by 50% * Reduce expenses by $1 million * Improvement in statement mailing processing time by greater than 24 hours AQP (www.aqp.org) is the nation's preeminent professional association, promoting performance excellence through employee involvement, specifically through high-performance teams. Winning the AQP National Team Excellence Gold award has been compared to winning the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Tom Peters, a noted author in the field of Excellence, remarked: "There is nothing else like this…competition in this country. This is special."AQP, The Association for Quality and Participation, is an international not-for-profit membership association dedicated to improving workplaces through quality and participation practices. Founded in 1977 (as the International Association of Quality Circles), AQP has helped countless individuals; organizations and communities establish a foundation for initiating change in the way they operate. AQP improves institutions, both large and small, by changing the way companies view their work, their relationships, their organizational structures and their communications. Pitney Bowes Inc. is a $4 billion global provider of integrated mail, messaging and document management solutions headquartered in Stamford, Conn. The company serves over 2 million businesses of all sizes.