April 2008

New executive management at Thonet

• Claus M. Thonet joins the Advisory Board as of 1 May 2008

• Roland Ohnacker to become new Managing Director

Upon turning 65 in March 2008, Claus M. Thonet will withdraw from executive management of the family-owned company based in Frankenberg in northern Hesse and join the Advisory Board. He is to be succeeded by Roland Ohnacker whose last position was as Managing Director of Drabert GmbH in Minden.

Claus M. Thonet was born in 1943 as the elder son of Georg Thonet who had rebuilt the famous company in Frankenberg in the aftermath of World War Two. After completing his economics studies at the Universities of Marburg, Freiburg and Munich, Claus M. Thonet initially held various positions in the Thonet company. He was appointed a member of the Board of Gebrüder Thonet AG in 1972. In 1978, the public limited company was transformed into a limited liability company. Shareholders Georg and Claus Thonet became managing directors with sole authorisation to represent the company. Georg Thonet withdrew from executive management in 1994 and Claus Thonet became sole Managing Director.

Together with his brothers Peter (since 1985), responsible for Marketing, Product Design and Distribution, and Philipp (since 1989), responsible for International Sales, Claus M. Thonet followed in his father’s footsteps in positioning the family business as a significant, design-oriented company operating at international level.

The decision to appoint an external Managing Director was a unanimous one made by the family and the Advisory Board. Claus Thonet: “We are convinced that the new Managing Director avails of excellent qualifications and the right vision for the company. We have great confidence in Roland Ohnacker and hope Thonet will benefit from key impulses as regards sales and production.”

Roland Ohnacker was born in Darmstadt in 1968. After training as an Industrial Merchant and completing his economics studies at the University of Frankfurt, he initially worked for EnBW in Karlsruhe until 1999. He then moved to become Managing Director at Samas Deutschland GmbH & Co. KG in Frankfurt, a major corporation in the office furniture industry, where he managed several subsidiaries and implemented numerous restructuring projects. As of June 2004, he was sole Managing Director at Drabert GmbH and Sitag GmbH in Minden – both manufacturers of office furniture – where he was responsible for approx. 45 million euros’ worth of sales. In April 2006, he undertook the additional task of sales co-ordination for the Samas Group.

Roland Ohnacker describes his new task of managing a family company as follows: “It is a great honour and challenge for me to head such an important brand-name company as Thonet which has been in existence for 189 years. Unlike in major corporations, sustained corporate development enjoys much more importance in family companies than increased profits over the short term. Thonet has clear competitive advantages in the hotly-contested furniture market thanks to its brand, design and quality.