Black Box Corporation Announces Merger With Di.el. Distribuzioni Elettroniche S.r.l.; On-Site Operations Now Established In Ten Countries.

Business Editors

PITTSBURGH--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 3, 2001

Black Box Corporation (Nasdaq:BBOX) today announced a merger with Di.el. Distribuzioni Elettroniche S.r.l. Established in 1983 in Rome, Italy, privately held Di.el. provides technical design, installation and maintenance services for premise cabling and infrastructure systems to customers throughout Italy. Annual revenues of Di.el. are approximately $3 million.

Commenting on the merger, Luca G. Grementieri, Managing Director of Black Box Italy, said, "Di.el. has a very strong market presence in Italy, especially in the Government sector, which is a large part of the Italian market. Di.el.'s excellent technical reputation will enhance our ability to provide a wide range of on-site infrastructure services throughout the region, nicely complimenting our phone support operations based in Milan."

Nazzareno Noro, Managing Director of Di.el., said, "Our merger with Black Box is a great opportunity to help us continue to develop and grow our business in Italy and we are proud to be Black Box's first on-site services company in Italy. We will be working closely with the established Black Box phone support business to leverage our on-site network services capabilities across the entire country." Mr. Noro will continue to serve as Managing Director of Di.el., which will be renamed Black Box Network Services -- Rome Operations, reporting to Mr. Grementieri.

This merger brings Black Box a step closer to its goal of offering complimentary on-site services to all of its clients throughout the world. Italy now joins Belgium, France, Japan, Mexico, The Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States as the tenth country where Black Box offers clients both phone and on-site technical support services.

This transaction is being accounted for as a purchase. The purchase price has not been disclosed.

Black Box is the world's largest technical services company dedicated to designing, building and maintaining today's complicated network infrastructure systems. Black Box services clients of all sizes in 132 countries throughout the world.