Black Box Corporation Announces Merger With NKS Netzwerke Kabel Systeme GmbH.

Business Editors & High Tech Writers

PITTSBURGH--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 29, 2002

Black Box Corporation (Nasdaq:BBOX) today announced a merger with NKS Netzwerke Kabel Systeme GmbH. Established in 1996 in Stuttgart, Germany, privately held NKS provides technical design, installation and maintenance services for premise cabling and related products to customers in Southern Germany. Annual revenues of NKS are approximately $1 million.

Commenting on the merger, Peter Obermeier, Finance Director of Black Box Germany, said, "Following on from our recent purchase of a similar business in Ramerberg, near Munich, we are now able to provide a full range of technical services to customers in Southern Germany and are working to expand this capability to all of Germany. The team at NKS are already working closely with our existing phone support and on-site operations in Munich to provide all the Black Box services to our collective customers."

Ernst Tschurtz, the Managing Director and a former owner of NKS, said, "Black Box is committed to being the foremost supplier of technical infrastructure services to end-user customers in Germany. We are very pleased to be an early part of what we feel is a very exciting and achievable goal. We are enjoying and benefiting from working with the Black Box team already and see many future opportunities for our customers and ourselves from this merger." NKS will change its name to Black Box Network Services -- Stuttgart Operations. Mr. Tschurtz will report to Mr. Obermeier.

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.

Note to Editors: The umlaut above the "u" in Tschurtz was omitted for transmission purposes.