Fresenius Continues expansion in the German hospital market and agrees to acquire the HUMAINE Kliniken

HELIOS Kliniken GmbH, a subsidiary of Fresenius AG, has agreed to acquire a majority stake in HUMAINE Kliniken GmbH.

HUMAINE operates six acute and post acute care hospitals in the fields of neurology, oncology and traumatology with a total of 1,850 beds, thereof 1,530 in the acute care area. The group owns two advanced care hospitals with about 600 beds each. HUMAINE was founded in 1984 and has approximately 2,900 employees.

The clinic group is privately owned. In 2005, it achieved sales of € 197 million and operating profit (EBIT) of € 14 million. The parties agreed not to disclose the purchase price which is to be paid in a combination of cash and, to a lesser extent, Fresenius ordinary and preference shares. HELIOS expects that the transaction will be completed in mid-2006. Initially, 60% of the shares will be acquired, and HELIOS has an option to acquire the remaining 40 %. The acquisition of HUMAINE will be accretive to Fresenius Group's earnings per share in the fiscal year 2006.

The acquisition is an important step in the expansion strategy of HELIOS. "With HUMAINE we have acquired a well-managed clinic group which complements the HELIOS network both geographically and in terms of medical orientation. While the focus will continue to be on the privatization of public-sector hospitals, HELIOS takes advantage of the opportunity to purchase HUMAINE in order to strengthen the hospital operations business. HUMAINE is a profitable company and fully fits our financial acquisition criteria in the hospital sector. With the experienced management team we will rapidly integrate HUMAINE into the HELIOS Kliniken Group to achieve further profitability improvements," says Dr. Ulf M. Schneider, Chairman of the Management Board of Fresenius AG.

The acquisition still requires approval by the antitrust authorities.

HELIOS Kliniken Group operates 51 clinics of its own with a total of 14,300 beds, including four maximum-care hospitals in Erfurt, Berlin-Buch, Wuppertal and Schwerin. The company's 24,800 employees carry out 420,000 in-patient treatments a year and in 2005 achieved sales of € 1.55 billion.

Fresenius is a health care group with international operations, providing products and services for dialysis, hospital and the ambulatory medical care of patients. In 2005, sales were € 7.9 billion. On December 31, 2005 the Fresenius Group had 91,971 employees worldwide.