ABB Appoints D. Howard Pierce President & CEO At U.S. Headquarters.

NORWALK, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 24, 1999--ABB announced today that D. Howard Pierce has been named president and chief executive officer of ABB Inc., the U.S. headquarters of ABB, effective April 1.

Mr. Pierce joined ABB from Westinghouse in 1991, and since then has held several senior executive positions with ABB. Most recently he has been head of ABB's worldwide steam power plants and environmental systems businesses. From 1996 to 1998 he was responsible for ABB's Americas region. From 1994 to 1996 he was country manager of ABB China.

Mr. Pierce succeeds Peter S. Janson, who has taken a position with AGRA Inc., the Toronto-based engineering firm.

Mr. Pierce is a member of the board of trustees of the Eisenhower Exchange Fellowships, and a member of the board of directors of the United States-China Business Council. He received his undergraduate degree in industrial engineering from Drexel University, and has completed the program for management development at Harvard University.

ABB, with U.S. headquarters in Norwalk, Conn., serves customers in power generation, transmission, and distribution; automation; oil, gas, and petrochemicals; industrial products and contracting; and financial services. ABB and its affiliates had U.S. orders of approximately $6.1 billion in 1998 and employ about 20,000 at manufacturing and other facilities in 41 states (http://www.abb.com/usa).

Worldwide, ABB Group reported orders of $31 billion in 1998 and employed about 200,000 people in more than 100 countries (http://www.abb.com/). In the United States, ADRs for shares in ABB Group's parent companies, ABB AB and ABB AG, are traded on the NASDAQ exchange (ABBBY) and in the OTC market (ABBGY), respectively.