Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE:HOT) named Kenneth S. Siegel as Executive Vice President, General Counsel.

Siegel joins Starwood from the Cognizant/IMS Health/The Gartner Group, and will report directly to Barry S. Sternlicht, Chairman and CEO. He will be responsible for worldwide legal and government relations for Starwood, including counseling on all corporate matters at both the senior management and Board level.

“Ken`s wide range of legal and managerial expertise coupled with his successes as both outside counsel and in-house counsel make him well qualified to take on the General Counsel role at Starwood,” says Barry Sternlicht, chairman and CEO, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc.

Siegel served as Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Cognizant/IMS Health/The Gartner Group for the last four years. Cognizant, a multinational information services company, was originally comprised of IMS Health; Nielsen Media Research and the Gartner Group. In 1998, Cognizant divested its three unrelated components into two entities and Siegel became General Counsel of IMS Health, which included IMS Health and a minority interest in Gartner. In 1999, IMS Health spun off Gartner in a tax-free transaction Ken designed, and he was named General Counsel of Gartner in January 2000.

From 1994 to 1997, Siegel was a Corporate Partner with Baker & Botts LLP, responsible for a full range of corporate legal services with particular focus on technology-oriented clients including Lotus, Polaroid, Dell and TCI as well as representation of international leveraged buyout funds and securities firms. Before that, he served as Corporate Partner with O`Sullivan Graev & Karabell LLP where he focused on work for Lotus as well as major transactional work including the acquisition of Motel 6 by Accor. Siegel began his career in 1980 as a Corporate Associate with Cravath Swaine & Moore.

Siegel received an AB degree from Cornell University and his JD with honors from New York University, where he was a member of the Law Review and received the John Norton Pomeroy Scholarship for academic excellence. He will be based at Starwood`s World Headquarters in White Plains, New York.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE: HOT) is one of the leading hotel and leisure companies in the world with more than 725 properties in 80 countries and 120,000 employees at its owned and managed properties. With internationally renowned brands, Starwood is a fully integrated owner, operator and franchiser of hotels and resorts including: St. Regis, The Luxury Collection, Sheraton, Westin, Four Points by Sheraton, W brands, as well as Starwood Vacation Ownership, Inc., one of the premier developers and operators of high quality vacation interval ownership resorts. For more information, please visit us at www.starwoodhotels.com

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