March 29, 2005

Verticalnet announces that Mittal Steel Company has licensed the Verticalnet(R) XE Spend Manager module.

With the proposed acquisition of International Steel Group (ISG), Mittal Steel will become the world's largest steel group, increasing production capacity from 48 million short tons to 70 million short tons a year. Mittal Steel selected the Verticalnet solution to achieve a single global view of spending across the recently merged entities.

Mittal Steel licensed the Verticalnet Spend Manager module to gain spend visibility across its 36 production units and 10 mine operations in 14 countries.

Upon completion of the implementation, Mittal Steel will use their improved spend analysis capability to support Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis, leverage the group's global and regional buying power, reduce inventory, and support global commodity sourcing.

"The size of Mittal Steel increases every day, in terms of acquired units, number of employees, turnover, tons produced, and volumes sourced," said Mr. Ashok Aranha, Materials Director for Mittal Steel.

"The size of the company results in significant buying power which, combined with fast decision making and a long term vision, are regarded as key competitive advantages. To continue enabling these advantages in the future, we require accurate consolidated information, available in a timely manner, and at low cost. After a thorough search of the market, we concluded that Verticalnet Spend Manager provided us with the best platform to gain a single view of spending across our global organization."

Aranha continued: "Prior to selecting Verticalnet, we relied on manual spreadsheets for spend analysis and frequently had to make sourcing decisions without an accurate view of spending data.

With the Verticalnet solution, we will be better able to leverage our corporate buying power, make faster sourcing decisions based on accurate data, benchmark our internal sourcing operations, and operate our central sourcing organization without disturbing the daily operations of our business units. As a result of the spend analysis implementation, we expect to dramatically increase the performance of our sourcing organization and deliver greater value to the bottom line."

Mittal Steel is the latest Verticalnet customer in the industrial resources segment, adding to recently announced wins with Alcan and a FORTUNE 1000(TM) chemicals manufacturer. Additionally, the Mittal win represents increased traction in its European operations, with one-third of its new customer wins since the third quarter of 2004 coming in Europe.

"We are pleased to add Mittal Steel to our growing list of European customers," said John McNeill, Verticalnet's SVP of Sales.

"Mittal Steel has set the pace for the consolidation and globalization of the world's steel industry. Highly acquisitive companies, like Mittal Steel, have a tremendous opportunity for bottom line improvement through the consolidation of their strategic sourcing processes.

Verticalnet Spend Manager is the perfect solution to provide them with the single view of spending required for them to make timely, fact-based strategic sourcing decisions."

Source: ME Steel.com