John Glass leaves the Group – Appointment of General Managers of the Business Groups

Agfa-Gevaert announces that John Glass, member of the Board of Management, has expressed his wish to resign from his functions and will leave the company, effective from March 20, 2004. He will return to Canada to join his family, who already resides there. The group thanks John Glass for all the work done during his years with Agfa and wishes him and his family all the best.

• Extraordinary Meeting of Shareholders called:
• renewal of authorised capital
• cancellation of 11.2 million treasury stocks
• renewal of the authorisation to buy back shares

The Board of Management is henceforth composed of Ludo Verhoeven, Chief Executive Officer, Marc Gedopt, Chief Financial and Administration Officer and Albert Follens, Chief Operating Officer.

Furthermore, the Board of Management is pleased to announce the appointment of General Managers for the Business Groups who are charged with the day to day management. These are Philippe Houssiau for HealthCare, Eddy Rottie for Consumer Imaging and Stefaan Vanhooren for Graphic Systems. 

These General Managers will, together with the heads of the Global Shared Services and Corporate departments, ensure the operational management of the Group.

Furthermore, the Board of Directors decided to call an Extraordinary Meeting of Shareholders, immediately consecutive to the Annual Meeting of Shareholders of April 27, 2004. 
On the agenda is the renewal of the authorised capital, which empowers the Board of Directors during a period of 5 years to increase the share capital in one or more times by a maximum amount of 35 million Euros. A maximum sum of 4.2 million Euros of this amount may be used by the Board of Directors to raise the share capital within the framework of a stock option plan. For a period of 3 years, the authorised capital can also be used to increase the capital in the event of a public take over bid on the company.
Furthermore, the Extraordinary Meeting of Shareholders will be asked to approve the cancellation of 11.2 million treasury stocks, which Agfa acquired under the share buy back program approved by the shareholders on January 13, 2003. Subsequently, the shareholders will be asked to renew their authorisation to buy back a maximum of 10 % of the remaining 128.8 million shares.
The full agenda of the Ordinary and Extraordinary Meetings of Shareholders will be published in the press on March 24 and April 2, 2004 and will be available on the Agfa website.

Philippe Houssiau was born in 1962 and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences, a Masters degree in Chemical Engineering and an MBA. Before joining Agfa, he was the global leader of a large and successful professional services division within PricewaterhouseCoopers. Previously, he had run his own business and held management positions with Baxter and Raychem Corporation.

Eddy Rottie was born in 1952 and studied Applied Economic Science at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium). He began his career at Cera-Bank (now KBC) in 1977 and joined Agfa in 1985. He assumed several functions in finance, in Mortsel as well as abroad.
Since April 2003, he assumes operational responsibility for Consumer Imaging.

Stefaan Vanhooren was born in 1964. He studied Applied Economic Science and obtained an MBA at the University UFSIA of Belgium. He began his career in 1989 at Agfa-Gevaert and rotated several management positions in Agfa’s Business Group Non-Destructive Testing (NDT).
In April 2002, he became responsible for Agfa’s operations in the Asia Pacific region.