New Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Vogt Group elected

René Rhinow has been elected Chairman of the Board of Directors at the Annual General Meeting of Vogt-Schild Holding, which publishes the Solothurner Zeitung newspaper, among others. He succeeds Fritz Schuhmacher, who is stepping down from the Board. Rhinow has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Vogt Group since 2003. Marco de Stoppani, formerly Director of Publishing and Printing at NZZ, was newly elected to the Board of Directors. Vice Chairman Beat Lorétan and Françoise Marcuard-Hammer were confirmed. These four members represent the majority shareholder, the Gottlieb and Hans Vogt Foundation, on the Board of Directors. Peter Wanner, Board delegate and CEO of the AZ Medien Group, and Max Bühlmann, Director of Investment Management at PubliGroupe in Lausanne, were also confirmed. The AZ Medien Group and PubliGroupe each hold a 17.5 percent stake in Vogt-Schild Holding, and it was reported that operating business in the 2005 financial year was not satisfactory in line with the industry. Due to the new constellation of the company and other special factors, the group's annual financial statements are not comparable with those of previous years and are therefore not published in detail.