Dec 09, 2005. /Lesprom Network/. Schweitzer-Mauduit International, Inc. announced on Friday that its board of directors has accelerated the vesting of certain unvested and "out-of-the-money" stock options previously awarded to employees and officers that have exercise prices above $30.00 per share. As a result, options to purchase approximately 300 000 shares of Schweitzer-Mauduit common stock will vest immediately, but no underlying shares will be transferable by officers prior to the original vesting schedule. Based upon yesterday's closing stock price of $24.22 none of these options have economic value at this time. In order to prevent unintended personal benefits to the company's officers, restrictions will be imposed on any shares received through the exercise of accelerated options held by those individuals. These restrictions will prevent the sale of any shares received from the exercise of an accelerated stock option prior to the earlier of the original vesting date of the option or the individual's termination of employment. Accelerated stock options held by the company's officers represent approximately 90% of the total accelerated options. Under the Financial accounting standards board statement №123R, "Share-based payment," Schweitzer-Mauduit will apply the expense recognition provisions relating to stock options beginning in the first quarter of 2006. As a result of the vesting acceleration, the company expects to reduce the pre-tax stock option expense it would otherwise be required to record by approximately $0.6 million in 2006 and $0.2 million in 2007. Wayne H. Deitrich, chairman of the board and chief executive officer, commented that, "We believe the acceleration of the stock option vesting is in the best interest of our stockholders as it will reduce the company's reported compensation expense in future periods as a result of the new accounting regulations. Because the accelerated options are significantly underwater, the accelerated vesting will avoid the unfair representation of the company's compensation costs that would arise from recognizing future accounting expenses that significantly exceed the current fair value of the associated stock options. Avoiding this stock option expense will better reflect the true economic realities of these stock options. The accelerated vesting will not create any windfall profit for the option holders, with the officers prevented from selling any shares received from these stock options earlier than under the original terms of the stock option grants." Schweitzer-Mauduit International, Inc. is a diversified producer of premium specialty papers and the world's largest supplier of fine papers to the tobacco industry. It also manufactures specialty papers for use in alkaline batteries, vacuum cleaner bags, overlay products, saturating base papers, business forms and printing and packaging applications. Schweitzer-Mauduit and its subsidiaries conduct business in over 90 countries and employ 3,700 people worldwide, with operations in the United States, France, Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines and Canada.