BCB Enters Into Strategic Alliance With Lernout & Hauspie That Includes A Share Exchange Worth US$1.6 Million.

MARKHAM, Ontario--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 7, 1998--BCB Holdings (Alberta Stock Exchange:BIV.)

L&H Speech Recognition Technology Will Be Integrated With BCB's Digital Voice-Systems.

BCB Holdings Inc. today announced that, pending regulatory and shareholder approval, it will enter into a strategic alliance with Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products NV (L&H), a worldwide market leader in speech and linguistic technologies. The deal will include a US$1.6 million share exchange between the companies, based on prices of US$0.176 for each BCB share and US$60 for each L&H share. The exchange will give L&H a 16.3 percent stake in BCB, after allowing for other recently announced financing of BCB. L&H and BCB will integrate L&H speech recognition technology with BCB's patented digital dictation and recording systems and BCB will resell L&H continuous speech recognition software through its growing dictation-specific distribution network.

Gaston Bastiaens, President and CEO of L&H, says the alliance will help his company accelerate delivery of its speech technology products into the medical, legal, legislative and courtroom markets addressed by BCB's digital dictation and recording systems. "BCB's technology offers a means to efficiently move voice files over computer networks, including TCP/IP (Internet Protocol). That's important to L&H because we are releasing our Voice Xpress series of speech recognition engines that are designed to process voice files for lexicon-specific medical, legal and business markets. This will increase the accuracy of speech-to-text and improve efficiency by essentially turning transcribers into editors. This process becomes highly effective when voice can be moved to the appropriate speech recognition engine for processing and then attached to the text for verification or further editing and correction."

Ken Murton, BCB's Chairman and CEO, points out that the alliance will be of significant benefit to BCB. "This deal validates both the value of our technology and the distribution infrastructure we have been building," he says. "We can now provide our rapidly growing base of customers with complete system solutions that include fully integrated speech-to-text capabilities. This will have a strong and positive effect on our ability to increase market penetration and sales revenue."

Lernout & Hauspie (NASDAQ:LHSPF) (EASDAQ:LHSP.ED) is an international leader in the development of technologies that provide the speech user interface and language user interface for a wide variety of third-party applications and end-user products. L&H's four core technologies - automatic speech recognition, text-to-speech, are licensed to some of the world's best known companies in the computer, telecommunication, multimedia, consumer electronic and automotive electronic industries. Microsoft Corp. holds a 6 percent stake in L&H and, as part of the recent launch of Microsoft Windows 98, L&H's new Voice Express Plus speech software will be promoted by Microsoft to millions of users as a premier product that utilizes the benefits of Windows 98.

BCB Holdings Inc. owns and operates BCB Technology Group, a developer of innovative software and systems in computer-based voice processing markets, and Granville Research Inc., which designs and implements Internet-based networks. BCB means Better Communication in Business.

The Alberta Stock Exchange has neither approved nor disapproved the information provided herein.

    CONTACT:  BCB Holdings Inc.
               Peter Vanderlee, 905/948-8266 ext. 204
                   or
               BCB Holdings Inc.
               Flora Wood, 416/777-0001