AXA Private Equity Germany Paris, Thursday May 2, 2002

AXA Private Equity opened a subsidiary in Frankfurt, AXA Private Equity Germany. Stephan Illenberger, Managing Director, joined in December, 2001 and Helmut Pitsch, Managing Director, has just arrived.

AXA Private Equity has now offices in London, Frankfurt and New York that report directly to the headquarters in Paris. AXA Private Equity manages or advises over € 4 billion of private equity funds. Worldwide investors (excluding AXA Group) represent 70% of assets under management. AXA Private Equity has established a foothold in over 80 companies.

Stephan Illenberger has been Managing Director of AXA Private Equity Germany GmbH since December 2001. He was previously a Managing Partner of the Corporate Finance advisory firm Doertenbach & Co. Prior to this, from 1995 to 1998, he was Head of Corporate Advisory Germany (M&A and Primary Equity) of NatWest Markets (Frankfurt) and member of the Global Corporate Advisory board (London) and was leading assignments inter alia to advise the Federal Republic of Germany and Austria on privatisations as well as DAX 30 and DAX 100 corporations on divestitures and acquisitions. From 1992 to 1995 he as CEO was restructuring the York Hannover Group (D, CDN, USA). The group was in financial difficulties due to fraud and was a large debtor of Bayerische Vereinsbank (Munich) where Stephan Illenberger co-started and developed the M&A business from 1987 to 1992. Transactions during this time included the sale of MBB to Daimler and the reshaping of DASA. Prior to this he was Analyst with McKinsey & Co. (Chicago), IBM (Sydney & Armonk) and the private equity group TRV (Munich & Boston). He served on the Investment Committees of IVC Venture Capital AG and the predecessor of NatWest Equity Partners and advised in total over 100 transactions. Stephan Illenberger holds a Dipl.-Kfm degree of LMU-University Munich and a M.A. in Economics of the university of Chicago and is a member of SFA (London) and Center for Financial Studies (Frankfurt).

Helmut Pitsch is Managing Director of AXA Private Equity Germany GmbH as of 15 May, 2002 and was previously a Managing Partner of Centennium Capital Partners (Munich), a later stage Private Equity firm with DM 100 million AUM. From 1988 to 2000, Helmut Pitsch held various management positions with Bayerische Vereinsbank (Munich). After joining the Project Finance team in 1988, Helmut Pitsch became responsible for Acquisition Financing which he led until 1995. He then became Head of Credit of Schöllerbank (Vienna) where he was also responsible for the restructuring and reorganising the bank and integrating with Bayerische Vereinsbank. In 1997 Helmut Pitsch took over the operational responsibility of the overall credit business of the HVB Group as Head of the Central Credit department. From 1985 to 1988 he was a consultant with Roland Berger (Munich) starting the new industry sector office communication (evaluation of sales and marketing strategies for international clients entering the German market such as Commodore, NCR, Acorn).
Later he was part of the financial services group advising clients such as Deutsche Bank and Allianz. From 1982 to 1985 he developed the international business of Acorn Computer plc (Cambridge) and set up the local German distribution company based in Munich. Helmut Pitsch is a graduate of the university of Innsbruck (Law, Business Science) and holds a doctor degree in law.