Paul Bremner Joins ESI North America as new CEO, and Jane Trenaman as COO

Daratech Summit, New York, February 17, 2003 - ESI Group today announced the appointment of Paul Bremner as Chief Executive Officer and Jane Trenaman as Chief Operating Officer of its wholly-owned subsidiary, ESI North America. Founder and President of Vibro-Acoustic Sciences until its acquisition by ESI Group, Paul Bremner is now in charge of strategic direction and financial profitability of ESI North America. He is also responsible for the overall growth and market penetration of ESI Group’s noise and vibration solution. Based in San Diego, Bremner brings more than 20 years of expertise in management and sales in the software industry.

"This is an exciting time to be joining ESI Group," stated Paul Bremner. "The company has spent the last 20 years building an incomparable suite of software for modeling the physics of materials. With the second generation of virtual prototyping software, ESI Group’s customers can replace almost any physical prototype test and fully simulate the manufacturing processes that determine critical product quality. This gives the company a unique role in today's PLM revolution, and I look forward to building a team to deliver and support these technologies in the US market place."

A leading figure in the field of noise and vibration engineering, Bremner founded Vibro-Acoustic Sciences in 1991. After moving Vibro-Acoustic Sciences from Sydney to San Diego, and steering its growth from a small, niche-market software company to a world-leader in its field, Bremner accepted the combined acquisition and merger offer from ESI Group. Prior to Vibro-Acoustic Sciences, Bremner launched SDRC’s MCAE software business in Australia. He has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Monash University in Australia.

Following ESI Group’s acquisition of Vibro-Acoustic Sciences, Jane Trenaman is now in charge of marketing, sales, engineering, customer support and consulting services of ESI North America, Vibro-Acoustic Science Inc. and ProCast Inc. As an integral part of Vibro-Acoustic Sciences’ management team, she helped leverage the growth of the start-up company through its acquisition. Before joining Vibro-Acoustic Sciences, Trenaman worked with a number of San Diego-based companies to help them restructure their organizations to better suit the changing business environment. Prior to moving to California, Trenaman held positions in finance and operations management with several companies in Australia. She has finance and business management degrees from the University of Technology in Sydney and an MBA from San Diego State University.

About ESI North America
Headquartered in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, ESI North America employs over 50 professionals and maintains sales and support offices in Detroit and San Diego, as well as product development units in San Diego and Annapolis, Maryland. Clients include Boeing Commercial Aircraft, Breed Technologies, DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Johnson Controls, Lear Corporation, Lockheed Martin, Newport News Shipbuilding, and United Technologies.

About ESI Group
ESI Group is a pioneer and world leading provider of digital simulation for prototyping and manufacturing processes that take into account the physics of materials. ESI Group has developed an entire suite of coherent, industry oriented applications to realistically simulate a product's behavior during testing, to fine tune the manufacturing processes in synergy with the desired product performance, and to evaluate the environment's impact on product usage. ESI Group's product portfolio, which has been industrially validated and combined in multi-trade value chains, represents a unique collaborative, virtual engineering solution, known as the Virtual Try-Out Space (VTOS), enabling a continuous improvement on the virtual prototype. By drastically reducing costs and development lead times, VTOS solutions offer major competitive advantages by progressively eliminating the need for physical prototypes. With revenues close to euros 43 million in fiscal year 2001, ESI Group (Nouveau March麠Euronext Paris - Software - Euroclear 6584 - Bloomberg ESI FP - Reuters ESIG.LN) employs over 300 high-level specialists worldwide. The company and its global network of agents provide sales and technical support to customers in more than 30 countries.
On the Net: ESI Group site: http://www.esi-group.com
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