January 28, 2010 08:30 AM Eastern Time 

Genzyme Adopts New Incentive Compensation Plans for Senior Executives

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Genzyme
Corporation (NASDAQ: GENZ) announced today that it has adopted new
annual and long-term incentive plans for senior executives that will be
utilized beginning in 2010. The plans are designed to align incentive
compensation with a broader set of measures of company performance. The
new incentive compensation program for senior executives is the
culmination of a review process first announced last spring.

“The plans provide shareholders with more
transparency into executive compensation decisions, and will encourage
senior executives to make decisions that drive growth and shareholder
value.”

“These incentive plans were carefully developed following a long and
thorough review,” said Genzyme board member and Compensation Committee
chair Charles Cooney, Ph.D., a member of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology faculty, and faculty director of MIT’s Deshpande Center for
Technological Innovation. “The plans provide shareholders with more
transparency into executive compensation decisions, and will encourage
senior executives to make decisions that drive growth and shareholder
value.”

The company’s senior executive annual incentive plan awards bonuses
based on corporate and individual performance. The prior annual
incentive plan used one metric - operating income - to measure corporate
performance. The new plan includes two corporate financial performance
measures: revenue and cash flow return on invested capital. It also
includes key business objectives that center on three areas,
organization renewal; pipeline advancements; and the recovery of the
Personalized Genetic Health business.

An additional business metric, divisional operating income, is applied
to leaders of the company’s business units. Together, these corporate
performance metrics will determine 80 percent of any award under the
plan, and individual performance will determine 20 percent for senior
executives.

The new long-term incentive plan is also a performance-based plan with
approximately half of the award consisting of a stock and cash grant
vesting after three years, but only if the company meets pre-approved
financial metrics. For the 2010-2012 performance period, the performance
metrics are relative total shareholder return measured against the
performance of twenty-eight companies in the S&P 500 Health Care index,
and cash flow return on invested capital.

The remainder of an award under the new long-term incentive plan will be
comprised of stock options. The prior long-term incentive plan included
equity grants that were solely time-vesting and did not include
performance metrics.

The company’s new incentive plans are further described in an exhibit to
the Form 8-K that the company filed today with the Securities and
Exchange Commission.

About Genzyme

One of the world's leading biotechnology companies, Genzyme is dedicated
to making a major positive impact on the lives of people with serious
diseases. Since 1981, the company has grown from a small start-up to a
diversified enterprise with more than 12,000 employees in locations
spanning the globe and 2008 revenues of $4.6 billion.

With many established products and services helping patients in
approximately 100 countries, Genzyme is a leader in the effort to
develop and apply the most advanced technologies in the life sciences.
The company's products and services are focused on rare inherited
disorders, kidney disease, orthopaedics, cancer, transplant and immune
disease, and diagnostic testing. Genzyme's commitment to innovation
continues today with a substantial development program focused on these
fields, as well as cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative diseases,
and other areas of unmet medical need.

Genzyme^® is a registered trademark of Genzyme Corporation.
All rights reserved.

Genzyme’s press releases and other company information are available at www.genzyme.com
and by calling Genzyme’s investor information line at 1-800-905-4369
within the United States or 1-678-999-4572 outside the United States.