Date: Wednesday, January 31, 2007

SALT LAKE CITY -- Zions Bancorporation (NASDAQ:ZION) announced today it has received notification from the Office of the Chief Accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that, with certain modifications, the SEC staff concurs that the Employee Stock Option Appreciation Rights Securities (ESOARS) instrument developed by Zions is sufficiently designed to be used as a market-based approach for valuing employee stock option grants for accounting purposes under Financial Accounting Standards (FAS) No. 123R.

"We strongly believe that among the several available methods for option valuation, a fair and open public auction of an appropriately designed tracking security is the best way to obtain the fair market value of employee stock options," said W. David Hemingway, executive vice president at Zions.

In addition to using ESOARS securities for its own FAS 123R stock option valuation, it is Zions' intent to advise other public companies and facilitate their use of ESOARS for this purpose. Zions Direct, a nonbanking broker-dealer subsidiary of Zions First National Bank, will act as auction agent. Zions has a patent pending on its ESOARS design and market pricing mechanism. Additional information about ESOARS can be found at https://www.esoarsauction.com/pma/, by calling 1-800-554-1688 or by sending an e-mail to ESOARS@zionsdirect.com.

Zions Bancorporation is one of the nation's premier financial services companies, consisting of a collection of great banks in select high growth markets. Zions operates its banking businesses under local management teams and community identities through over 500 offices and 600 ATMs in 10 Western states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah and Washington. The company is a national leader in Small Business Administration lending and public finance advisory services. In addition, Zions is included in the S&P 500 and NASDAQ Financial 100 indices.