North Fork Bancorporation Named to Elite List as a Dividend Achiever™ Company

Business Wire, July 18, 2005

MELVILLE, N.Y. -- North Fork Bancorporation, Inc. (NYSE:NFB) announced today that it has been named to the elite list of Dividend Achievers companies for 2005 by Mergent, Inc. Mergent develops and maintains the Dividend Achievers Indexes, a unique class of companies that focuses on dividend-paying stocks with long-term records of consistent dividend increases, a group that has historically outperformed the overall market and helped to boost portfolio returns over the long term. This year, just 314 of the 15,000 U.S. publicly listed companies monitored by Mergent met the stringent criteria required to be a Dividend Achiever. As a group, the Dividend Achievers stocks have been shown to outperform the market by a significant margin over the long term.

The annual list of Dividend Achievers, compiled by Mergent, is made up of companies that have increased their regular annual dividends every year for at least the past 10 years or longer, and which meet certain additional financial criteria. Such companies tend to have strong cash flows, solid balance sheets, and the potential for long-term out performance.

North Fork will pay its second quarter dividend of $.22 per share on August 15, 2005 to shareholders of record as of July 29, 2005.

Mergent has compiled its annual Dividend Achievers roster since 1979. The 2005 Dividend Achievers list is available at www.dividendachievers.com. Mergent's quarterly Dividend Achievers Handbook, published by John Wiley & Sons, provides corporate information and financial data on all of the Dividend Achievers companies, as well as supplementary rankings.

North Fork is a regional bank holding company headquartered in New York with approximately $60 billion in assets conducting commercial and retail banking from 357 branch locations in the Tri-State area with a complementary national mortgage banking business.