2005-06-17 Decisions of KONE Corporation’s Extraordinary Shareholders’ Meeting

KONE Corporation’s Extraordinary Shareholders’ Meeting was held in Helsinki on 17 June, 2005. The Shareholders’ Meeting decided upon the following items:

1. Addition to the Board of the Directors

The Extraordinary Shareholders’ Meeting decided to raise the number of members to KONE Corporation’s Board of Directors to eight, and elected Reino Hanhinen as the new member of the Board, in accordance with the Nomination Committee’s proposal. The other members of the Board are Antti Herlin (chairman), Sirkka Hämäläinen-Lindfors (vice chairman), Matti Alahuhta, Jean-Pierre Chauvarie, Masayuki Shimono, Gerhard Wendt and Iiro Viinanen.

2. Authorization to Acquire and Distribute Own Shares

The Board of Directors’ proposal that the Annual General Meeting authorize the Board of Directors to repurchase KONE’s own shares with assets distributable as profit was approved. Altogether no more than 6,367,000 shares may be repurchased, of which no more than 952,000 are class A shares and 5,415,000 are class B shares, taking into consideration the provisions of the Companies Act regarding the maximum amount of own shares that the Company is allowed to possess. The proposed amount corresponds to nearly 10 percent of the share capital of the Company and the total voting rights.

In addition, the Board of Directors was authorized to decide to whom and in which order the repurchased shares will be distributed. The Board of Directors may decide on the distribution of repurchased shares otherwise than in proportion to the existing pre-emptive right of shareholders to purchase the Company’s own shares. The repurchased shares may be used as compensation in acquisitions and in other arrangements in the manner and to the extent decided by the Board of Directors. The Board of Directors also has the right to decide on the distribution of the shares in public trading on the Helsinki Stock Exchange to be used as compensation in possible acquisitions. The shares shall be distributed at least at the market price quoted for class B shares on the Helsinki Stock Exchange at the moment of their transfer.

These authorizations shall remain in effect for a period of one year from the date of decision of the Extraordinary Shareholders’ Meeting. Precise information about the authorization to acquire and distribute own shares can be found in the invitation to the Extraordinary Shareholders’ Meeting, which has been published on the KONE website at www.kone.com.

Sender:

KONE Corporation

Tapio Hakakari
Director, Secretary to the Board

Minna Mars
Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications & IR

For further information, please contact:
Tapio Hakakari, Director, Secretary to the Board, tel. +358 (0)204 75 4226

KONE is the world’s fourth largest elevator company and provides complete and innovative solutions for the installation, maintenance and modernization of elevators and escalators and the maintenance of automatic building doors. KONE provides safe and easy access to hundreds of millions of people daily in all parts of the world. KONE has annual net sales of approximately EUR 2.9 billion and about 25,500 employees. Its class B shares are listed on the Helsinki Exchanges.