Additional investment to finance expansion into new markets and products

ISMANING, GERMANY, CHESSINGTON, UK and INDIANAPOLIS, USA , 17 March 2003 - Willtek Communications GmbH, a maker of test equipment for the wireless communications industry, announced today that the venture capital arm of Investcorp, the global investment group with a 20-year track record of investing in North America and Europe, has acquired a majority interest in the company from Acterna Corp.  Investcorp intends to provide Willtek with additional capital to expand its operations into new geographic markets and to support new product launches. 

Until April 2002, Willtek was a subsidiary of U.S.-based Acterna Corp.  In May 2002, the current Willtek management team, lead by CEO Cyrille Damany, undertook a buy-out of the company, financed by Willtech Inc., a wireless engineering firm based in Seoul, Korea.  Investcorp’s acquisition concludes this staged-management buyout and sets Willtek on the right footing to operate as an independent company.  Willtech Inc. and Willtek’s management team will remain meaningful shareholders in the company.

Over the past 40 years, Willtek, and it predecessor companies, have developed some of the most successful and innovative wireless testing products, under the “Willtek”, “Wavetek” and “Chase” brand names.  Willtek’s customers include some of the largest telecoms manufacturers such as Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson, Siemens and Sagem, as well as network operators such as mmO2, Cingular, T-Mobile and Verizon. 

Despite a year of reduced expenditure across the mobile communications industry, Willtek has solid revenues recording gross revenues of € 34 million during last year.  The company has a strong order book, having gained new customers in 2002.  As more wireless networks based on the 2.5G and 3G standards are deployed over the coming years, the outlook for Willtek is even stronger, as the company is one of the few test equipment providers capable of providing a full range of test solutions for both 3G protocols.  This has made the company an attractive investment to Investcorp.

Hazem Ben-Gacem, a partner at Investcorp, said: “The performance of Willtek over the course of last year has been very strong despite the tough market conditions.  Willtek is very well placed for strong growth in Asia and from the increasing demand they are seeing from operators planning to upgrade and roll out new networks.  Willtek is a great new addition to our portfolio of companies.” 

Hazem Ben-Gacem and another senior Investcorp partner, Savio Tung, will join the newly created shareholder’s Executive Board established by Investcorp for its shareholding in Willtek.  In addition, Mr. Werner Schmücking will join this Executive Board in the capacity of non-executive director.  Mr Schmücking was a member of the Group Board of Siemens AG Information and Communication Networks (ICN) until 2000 and was president of the German Association of the Electronics Industry (ZVEI) and vice president of the German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM).

Cyrille Damany, CEO of Willtek, said:  “Our continued focus on providing our customers with solutions designed to meet their exact business needs with a fast return on investment has paid off.  We are very honored now to be associated with a company of Investcorp’s reputation.  Investcorp’s involvement with Willtek gives us the capital we need to complete our plans to take advantage of the market position we have gained.  With Investcorp’s backing we now have the ability to create an infrastructure that will bring us closer to our customers.  We will also be able to accelerate our product development to address the test challenges created by the deployment of new wireless technologies.”

Willtek has a portfolio of products for the testing of wireless handsets at the production and repair stage and for the deployment and optimization of networks.  This portfolio makes it well positioned to take advantage of the growing activity from operators and manufacturers rushing to deploy and commercially operate 3G networks.  In particular, Willtek is one of the few test equipment providers capable of providing a full range of test solutions for both 3G protocols: CDMA2000 and W-CDMA/UMTS.  In recent months the company has benefited from the acceleration of the deployment of CDMA2000 1xRTT in the U.S. and Korea.