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April 30, 2004 | Corporate News | English

Tecan shareholders approve unchanged dividend payment of CHF 0.45 per share and appointment of three new members to Board of Directors

Zurich, Switzerland, 28 April 2004 - The Annual General Meeting of Tecan Group Ltd. took place in Zurich on April 28th 2004. Tecan shareholders approved the proposal for a payment of an unchanged dividend of CHF 0.45 per registered share. Shareholders also endorsed the election of Gérard Vaillant, Prof. Dr. Peter Ryser and Cleto De Pedrini to the Board of Directors and approved all further proposals in the meeting agenda.

Mike Baronian, Chairman of the Board of Directors, commented: “We are extremely pleased to welcome Gérard Vaillant, Prof. Dr. Peter Ryser and Cleto De Pedrini to the Board of Directors of Tecan”. He added: “Through these appointments, Tecan will directly benefit from many years of first-hand experience in areas including senior level business administration, finance, law, diagnostics, microtechnologies and robotics. This input will be invaluable to Tecan as we pursue our business opportunities worldwide.”

After the partial completion of the second share buy back program, started on May 14th 2003, the shareholders’ meeting approved the proposal of the Board of Directors to cancel the 847’000 repurchased registered shares and to reduce the share capital by 6.5% from CHF 13’106’945 to CHF 12’259’945. The program is continued and allows for up to 460’607 shares to be repurchased until May 13th, 2005.

Shareholders also approved the business reports for 2003 including the annual report, annual financial statements, and consolidated financial statements for the year. They also discharged the Board of Directors. KPMG Fides Peat, Zurich has been re-elected as statutory and group auditors for the business year 2004.

 

Changes to Board of Directors

At the meeting, shareholders agreed to amend the Articles of Incorporation to allow a director to serve a renewable term of three years as opposed to the previous one-year tenure with renewal. The Board may now include a maximum of seven members. Accordingly, shareholders re-elected Mr. Mike Baronian, Prof. Dr. Armin Seiler and Timothy Anderson as directors for a new statutory mandate of three years. They are now joined by Gérard Vaillant, Prof. Dr. Peter Ryser and Cleto De Pedrini:

Gerard Vaillant, 1942, US citizen, retired from Johnson & Johnson in March, 2004.  Mr. Vaillant worked for J&J for the past 20 years and has spent his whole career in the diagnostic area. Early in his career, he was responsible for the J&J diagnostic business in France and, afterwards, for J&J’s European diagnostic business. He was subsequently appointed company group chairman for the LifeScan business, which is the diabetic self-test business of J&J, the second largest of its kind in the world. In the 9 years before his retirement, Mr. Vaillant was company group chairman of the combined ortho-diagnostic and clinical diagnostic businesses that J&J purchased from Kodak. Today, this unit is called Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics and is one of Tecan’s most important corporate customers.

Prof. Dr. Peter Ryser, 1951, Swiss citizen, is currently Professor of Microtechnology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. He obtained a PhD in Physics from the University of Geneva and also holds two Masters degrees, in Physics and Corporate Management, respectively. Prof. Dr. Ryser is presently a member of the Board of Directors of Sensile Holding Ltd, and Vice President of Sensile Technologies Ltd, Lausanne, and Sensile Systems Ltd, Zurich.

Cleto De Pedrini, 1945, Swiss citizen, is presently Partner at Topwork Ltd., Zurich. He studied Public Law, Business Administration and Economics at the University of St Gallen. Throughout his career, he has held senior management positions where he has been responsible for finance, controlling, marketing, strategic business development, the acquisition and divestiture of companies, joint ventures and information technology. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of Autogrill Switzerland Ltd. and NovoGel Holding Ltd.

For more information, please contact:

TECAN
Aitor Galdos
Chief Executive Officer
Phone: +41 (0)44 922 82 05
E-Mail: investor@tecan.com