Electrocomponents Plc.

John has been in marketing for more than 25 years specialising in direct marketing both in business-to-business and consumer fields - particularly building and exploiting customer databases. Before forming his own consultancy 10 years ago, John worked for a number of major UK companies, including Commercial Union's ARP Association where he increased the membership base from around 12,000 to over 120,000. Before ARP John worked as Marketing Manager for Saga Publishing where he re-launched the Saga Club and used a range of direct marketing methods to increase club membership to over 300,000. Prior to Saga, John was Direct Mail Operations Manager at Whatman, responsible for their LabSales Catalogue and before that ran Digital's DECdirect Catalogue. Before that he held a similar position with Fisons, responsible for the Griffin & George educational catalogue. Before joining Fisons, John had been Managing Director of two successful mail order catalogue companies. John originally trained as an electronics engineer with Hawker Siddeley Dynamics before working for RS Components Ltd (part of Electrocomponents plc). John has a Masters Degree in Business Administration. He also holds the BDMA Diploma in Direct Marketing, and is a Member of both the Chartered Institute of Marketing and has recently been made a Fellow of the Institute of Direct Marketing. He is a member of the Institute of Business Advisers, a Fellow of the Institute for Independent Business, and acts as an adviser for the Prince's Trust.

Mr. Mamsch studied economics at Deutsche Aussenhandels-und Verkehrs-Akademie, Bremen and also received training in business administration and shipping in Germany, the United Kingdom and Belgium. He worked for 20 years in international trade and shipping. In 1989 he joined VEBA AG (now E ON AG), Germany's largest utility-based conglomerate. From 1993 to 2000 he was a VEBA AG management board member and as from 1998 responsible for their US electronic businesses and their Corporate Strategy and Development. In 1997 he joined Logica as a Non-Executive Director and until 2007 was appointed their Deputy Chairman. He is Chairman of Electrocomponents plc and also a Non-Executive Director of GKN plc. Mr. Mamsch was appointed as a Non-Executive Director of Sappi Limited in January 2004 and is currently a member of both the Audit Committee and the Compensation Committee of Sappi Limited. He is Chairman of the Audit Committee of Sappi Fine Paper Europe.

Helmut Mamsch, 62, joined the Board on 1 September 2006 as Chairman designate. He took over as Chairman at the October Board meeting. He is Deputy Chairman of Logica CMG plc and a Non-executive Director of both GKN plc, an automotive and aerospace company, and SAPPI Ltd, a major fine paper producer. He is also a Supervisory Board member of K+S AG and Cemex Deutschland.