ALTANA Pharma Announces Strategic Realignment of the U.S. Business.

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. & KONSTANZ, Germany -- ALTANA Pharma today announced that it will realign several components of its US pharmaceutical business. As part of the realignment, ALTANA Pharma will undertake a series of initiatives aimed at redeploying its resources in line with recent developments in several of its key pharmaceutical products.

* ALTANA Pharma will dismantle its marketing and sales organization in Florham Park, NJ by the end of 2006. ALTANA's clinical development and regulatory functions in Florham Park will continue to develop the company's line of respiratory products both independently and with outside partners. The global franchise team respiratory will remain in Florham Park.

* The Company will also close its ALTANA Research Institute in Waltham, MA in the first half of 2007, transferring, where appropriate, key projects to ALTANA Pharma's research center in Konstanz, Germany.

* ALTANA Inc., located in Melville, Long Island, will remain unaffected by today's announcement.

Over the next three quarters, the realignment will result in the departure of approximately 400 individuals, the majority of whom are currently based in or report to the ALTANA Pharma US headquarters out of Florham Park, NJ.

"We have been developing various go-to-market strategies in the U.S., which have been impacted by delays in the US approvals of our respiratory products Alvesco and Daxas," said Dr. Hans-Joachim Lohrisch, Chief Executive Officer of ALTANA Pharma AG. "As a result, we have made some very difficult decisions for ALTANA Pharma's business in the U.S. to better position ourselves for future growth."

While the timing coincides with the recent announcement of Nycomed acquiring ALTANA Pharma, the decisions announced today occurred completely independent of that transaction and are solely a function of the business issues facing ALTANA Pharma in the U.S.

About ALTANA Pharma

ALTANA Pharma AG is the pharmaceutical division of ALTANA AG (NYSE: AAA, FSE: ALT), headquartered in Konstanz, Germany. ALTANA Pharma is an internationally successful, research-based company providing innovative pharmaceuticals that create a higher quality of life for patients, modern jobs for highly qualified employees and a good return for shareholders.

The product range of ALTANA Pharma focuses on therapeutics for the treatment of gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases, which the company develops with intense research commitment.

In 2005, ALTANA Pharma achieved sales of about a[logical not] 2.4 billion, up 12% from 2004. Investment in Research and Development - approximately one-fifth of therapeutics sales revenues - increased steadily and, in 2005, stood at a[logical not] 418 million. ALTANA Pharma employs about 9,000 people in over 30 countries.

Further information is available in the Internet at www.altanapharma.com