Paris, 23rd October 2007: ESI Group (ISIN FR0004110310), a pioneer and world-leading solution provider in virtual prototyping and manufacturing processes, announces the appointment of Mr Eric Müller-Borle as Chief Financial Officer.

An HEC Paris graduate and a CFA charterholder, Eric Müller-Borle spent a large part of his career within the Axa group, where he was Head of strategic planning at Axa Assurances France, then CFO of several subsidiaries and finally CEO of Maxis, a joint venture between Axa and Metlife, the US leader in group insurance. Leaving the insurance world, in 2003 Eric Müller-Borle became CFO and Corporate Secretary of Kneip Communication (Luxembourg), the world leader in industrialised financial communication (with presence in 12 countries and an annual turnover of over 70 million euros in 2006).

Backed by substantial international experience, Eric Müller-Borle has stood out, during his career, through his efficient steering and implementation of strategic business plans.

Eric Müller-Borle has joined ESI Group on 22^nd October as Chief Financial Officer.

Alain de Rouvray, ESI Group’s Chairman and CEO, concludes: “While the technological and qualitative leadership of our products is well proven and our R&D costs are under tight control, we substantially strengthened our Sales & Marketing central management at the start of the year. We now consolidate the administrative and financial team in order to enable the optimisation of our international deployment within a strong cost-control context. We are confident that Eric Müller-Borle has all the necessary experience and skills to perfect the efficient steering of our development plan and thus ensure the acceleration of our profitable growth strategy.”

About ESI Group

A virtual test software package publisher, ESI Group is the world-leading supplier, and a pioneer of digital simulation software for prototyping and manufacturing processes that take into account the physics of materials. ESI Group has developed an extensive suite of coherent, industry oriented applications to realistically simulate a product’s behaviour during testing, to fine-tune manufacturing processes in accordance with desired product performance, and evaluate the environment’s impact on product performance. ESI Group’s products, which have a proven track record in manufacturing and have been combined in multi-trade value chains, represent a unique collaborative and open virtual engineering solution known as the Virtual Try-Out Space (VTOS), enabling virtual prototypes to be improved in a continuous and collaborative manner. This integrated communication protocol will enable all the company’s solutions to work with each other and with applications developed by independent software vendors. By significantly reducing costs and development lead times and enabling product/process synergies, VTOS solutions offer major competitive advantage by progressively eliminating the need for physical prototypes during product development. The company generated sales of €66m in 2006, employs over 600 high-level specialists worldwide covering more than 30 countries. ESI Group is listed in Eurolist compartment C of Euronext Paris. For further information, visit www.esi-group.com.

Listed in Eurolist compartment C of Euronext Paris

ISIN FR 0004110310 - FTSE 977- Bloomberg ESI FP - Reuters ESIG.LN

ESI GROUP has been qualified as “an innovative company” since January 20^th 2000 (last renewal on July 30^th, 2007) by the OSEO-Anvar and is eligible for inclusion in “FCPI” (venture capital trusts dedicated to innovation).

Third-quarter sales will be published on 11th December 2007 (after market)

Virtual Try-Out Space® and VTOS® are registered trademarks of ESI Group. All other products, names or companies are the brands or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

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