Devonshire Capital
March 1st 2002

TO THE BUSINESS EDITOR

Datamat commits to groundbreaking board changes

In a first for Asia, 9 out of 10 board members to be non-executive as the recently restructured IT company makes exemplary corporate governance a top priority

Bangkok, February 21 2002 – Bangkok-based Datamat Public Company Limited (Datamat) today announced a significant overhaul of its Board of Directors, removing 12 of 14 incumbent board members and appointing a total of nine non-executive directors. Datamat, whose shares resumed trading on the Stock Exchange of Thailand on December 27 2001 after a suspension of 44 months, has made the achievement of global standards of corporate governance a prime objective. The streamlining of the board – from 14 to 10 members – and the inclusion of a record number of non-executive director’s constitute the company’s first major steps in pursuit of this goal.

The action was taken at the first shareholders’ meeting since the resumption of trading. The nine non-executive directors join Khun Manoo Ordeedolchest, Datamat’s co-founder and current CEO and President – the only company employee to retain a seat. The Board now includes three foreign directors, along with specialists in systems integration, law, banking and accountancy

“We are determined that the new Datamat will stand head and shoulders above our competitors, both in terms of transparency and corporate governance as well as in the quality of our products and services,” said Khun Manoo. “The new board has an abundance of external members with a rich diversity of skills and accomplishments. We are confident that this corporate culture will permeate the business and translate into a stronger company throughout.” Each director has also committed to joining the Thai Institute of Directors, the Thai branch of the global corporate governance oversight body.

Khun Manoo stressed that its growing systems integration business will generate increasingly high-value and high-margin revenues in the years ahead. “Throughout the long restructuring process between 1998 and last year, we had no access to either debt or equity capital to support our bids for the larger and more profitable mandates, but now we do.”

The company will dedicate key resources to building its systems integration business. Together with leading international partners, Datamat is targeting infrastructure and enterprise application solutions
in its proven vertical specializations of financial services and telecommunications. Its renewed access to the financial markets will also support its concerted push into the market for public sector contracts. Khun Manoo added, “We’re confident of success and expect significant growth in consolidated revenues in 2002 and beyond.”