Led by the chief operating officer, this committee is charged with effectively executing business and portfolio strategies (except for Real Estate) agreed upon by the chief executive officer, senior management team and board of directors. Key operational processes managed by the COO and executive committee are:

• The capital budget within the corporate budget.
• Performance management and margin improvement.
• Execution of portfolio additions and divestitures as agreed to by the CEO and board of directors.
• Policy and best practices for safety, environmental leadership, information technology strategies and standardization, process reliability and customer value propositions.

FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY



Patricia M. Bedient
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Guiding Principles

• To protect the underlying interests of our shareholders and lenders.
• To maintain an investment-grade credit rating.
• To ensure access to capital markets at all times.

Conservative Financial Strategy

• We manage our capital structure to target a 30–40 percent debt-to-total-capital ratio.
• We continually seek to improve returns from our businesses to strengthen our cash flow ratios.

Capital Management

• We have high-quality assets that are efficient and relatively modern.
• We remove underperforming and nonstrategic assets from our system.
• We continually seek to improve productivity and optimize our operating systems.
• We will target to return 20–30 percent of our operating cash flow to shareholders in dividends.
• We periodically repurchase shares when market conditions warrant.