Dear EDA Industry Member:

The EDA Consortium organized an email campaign in cooperation with the American Electronics Association (AEA) to save employee stock options (ESOP) and employee stock purchase plans (ESPP). The campaign ran for 75 days and ended on July 15, 2004.

1,300 people wrote 2,610 letters as a result of this campaign, far exceeding our goal of 1,000 letters.

On behalf of the EDA Consortium, we want to extend a special thank you for writing your letter to save stock options. The Consortium recognized the top three EDA companies generating the most letters (adjusted for company size) at our annual Kaufman Award dinner on October, 28, 2004. Those companies were:

- Synopsys
- Novas
- Applied Wave Research

Looking for More Details on ESOP & ESPP?
The AEA website has a wealth of information on the ESOP and ESPP issues. Click here for those details.

According to a Harvard University study (in 2002):
14 million US citizens hold stock options
94% of workers who hold stock options are middle class or below*

*Source: Analysis of Profs. Douglas Kruse and Joseph Blasi of Rutgers University and Prof. Richard Freeman of Harvard University of General Social Survey for 2002 based on a random sample of all U.S. employees.