European Champion for Inventiveness

Best of European Business Award

Ditzingen, October 26, 2005 – Thanks to its infinite ingenuity and inventiveness, TRUMPF leads the European business elite. This was the opinion of the high-ranking jury of the “Best of European Business Award“ which selected the company as European champion in the category of “innovation.” According to their assessment, the intense commitment to innovation on the part of Europe's biggest machine tool manufacturer and laser specialist can be seen everywhere.

"The company invests eight percent of its sales in research and development, this is twice as much as the industry average. In addition, TRUMPF works closely together with technical universities and supports the intense exchange of knowledge between international expert teams. Even the customers are involved early on in the development of new products. The fact that this commitment has paid off can be seen in the company’s product portfolio. Sixty percent of sales are earned with products that have been newly developed in the last four years," according to the jury’s statement.

The "Best of European Business" competition was created by Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, the Financial Times and the manager magazine. It is held simultaneously in seven of Europe’s most important economic strongholds – France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.

The "Best of European Business" awards are given to exemplary entrepreneurial performances in the categories of growth, value generation, innovation and strategies for the New Europe. To select the final winners, expert teams assessed the data of about 6,000 European companies and then made preliminary selections.

In each country, a jury made up of renowned personages from business, science and the media selected the winner. In Germany, the jury included Dieter Ammer, Chairman of the Board of Tchibo Holding, Dr. Arno Balzer, Editor-in-Chief of manager magazine, Andrew Gowers, Editor-in-Chief of the Financial Times, Dr. Klaus Kleinfeld, Chairman of the Board of Siemens AG, Steffen Klusmann, Editor-in-Chief of the Financial Times Germany, Kai-Uwe Ricke, Chairman of the Board of Deutsche Telekom AG, Dr. Burkhard Schwenker, Chairman of the Man-agement Board of Roland Berger Strategy Consultants and Prof. Dr. Klaus Spremann, Professor of the University of St. Gallen.

Two companies were awarded in each category: A large company with more than € 3 billion in sales and a medium-size company with sales between € 1 and 3 billion. BMW and TRUMPF were awarded for their performance in the field of innovation. Next to Porsche, Altana was awarded the prize for excellent growth. The jury selected Continental and K + S for the value generation category. BASF and the Axel Springer Verlag won the jurors over for their strategies for the New Europe.