Frederic V. Salerno, Retired Vice Chairman
Verizon Communications

After two years as Verizon's vice chairman and chief financial officer, and more than 37 years of service to the business, Fred Salerno will retire at the end of September 2002. He plans to devote more of his time to other business interests, nonprofit activities and his family.

Prior to the Bell Atlantic / GTE merger, Salerno was senior executive vice president and chief financial officer of Bell Atlantic. He was a member of the Office of the Chairman, with responsibility for the company's strategic planning efforts, business development, and finance. He also had oversight of the company's portfolio of international wireline investments.

Salerno served as a lead negotiator in three of the most significant mergers in business history: the 1997 merger of Bell Atlantic and NYNEX, Bell Atlantic's merger with GTE, and the combination of the U.S. wireless assets of Bell Atlantic and Vodafone into the country's largest wireless provider, Verizon Wireless. He also directed Bell Atlantic's successful efforts to realize the annual expense savings, capital efficiencies and revenue gains resulting from the merger with NYNEX.

Besides his work on the mergers, Salerno has been recognized for his financial leadership in devising the use of exchangeable notes, complex financial structures that enabled Bell Atlantic to monetize two major investments.

Prior to his appointment as Bell Atlantic's Chief Financial Officer, Salerno was vice chairman-finance and business development at NYNEX, a position he assumed in 1994. Salerno had served as vice chairman of NYNEX and president-Worldwide Services since March 1991.

A native New Yorker, Salerno joined New York Telephone in 1965 and was elected vice president in 1983, when he directed the divestiture of the company from the Bell System. In 1985 he was promoted to executive vice president and chief operating officer of New England Telephone. In 1987 Salerno was appointed president and chief executive officer of New York Telephone.

Salerno is a member of the boards of AVNET, Inc., Akamai Technologies, Bear Stearns Company, Inc., Consolidated Edison, Inc., D&B, Lynch Interactive Corporation, Manhattan College and Viacom, Inc.

An active participant in support of community and educational issues, Salerno in 1988 was named chairman by then-Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York's Temporary State Commission on the Distribution of State Aid to Local School Districts. In 1990, Cuomo appointed him chairman of the board of trustees of the State University of New York, and he served in that capacity until February 1996. He is a trustee of the Inner-City Scholarship Fund and has served as chairman of the Archdiocese of New York's Partnership for Quality Education Campaign. In September 1999, the National Italian American Foundation gave him its Special Achievement Award for Humanitarian Service.

In 1997, New York Gov. George Pataki appointed Salerno to serve on the state's International Business Development Council.

Salerno is a member of the American Association of the Sovereign Military Order of the Knights of Malta, an international relief organization with permanent observer status in the United Nations.

He received a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Manhattan College and a master of business administration degree from Adelphi University.