Huber+Suhner, supplier of components and systems for electrical and optical connectivity, announces that Guy Petignat will join the company as COO Fibreoptic + Cable Technology and member of the Executive Group Management as of 1st January 2006. Petignat, 47, is currently COO for Kaba Key + Ident Systems Europe and AsiaPacific. He is a Swiss and Australian citizen with a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Petignat has a genuine industrial background and a proven track record with several years of experience from the Kaba group, as well as among others, more than 10 years from Ascom.

Through his activities in Europe, Asia and Australia, he also has an impressive international and multicultural background.

As the successor of Ingo Kubler, who left the company in July, Petignat will join Huber+Suhner as head of the Fibreoptic + Cable Technology Sector, reporting to CEO Urs Kaufmann.

Petignat said: ‘I am greatly looking forward to taking up the new challenges at Huber+Suhner, a global group with an attractive technology portfolio and genuine opportunities for growth’.

Kaufmann said: ‘We are happy to have enlisted Mr Petignat for our organisation’.

‘With his vast wealth of experience, he will strengthen our management team in an ideal manner’.

‘And this in a time in which we continue to forge ahead with the forward strategy we have launched’.