UK – November 25th 2006 – Cook Group Incorporated, the largest privately held medical device manufacturer in the world, was today named as the Irish Exporters Association’s Exporter of the Year and Life Science Exporter of the Year for 2006. The prestigious accolades are a positive endorsement for its successful and rapidly growing European sales, marketing, customer service and distribution operation in Ireland. Ireland is home to manufacturing plants for 15 of the World’s top 25 medical device companies, which were responsible for €3.7 billion in exports over the last year.

Both the Life Science and Overall Ireland Exporter awards signify Cook’s growing, positive impact on the medical device marketplace and on the community in which it operates. Cook’s spectacular sales success throughout Europe continues apace with Cook experiencing a doubling in sales over the last four years as Cook continues to take competitor market share from its competitors across many of its business units. Cook growth has come almost exclusively through its successful export operations to 37 countries in EMEA. This enviable export effort is reinforced by the provision of product and service capability, whereby products can be designed, developed, manufactured, ordered and shipped, all from the Limerick facility.

Cook’s Limerick base supplies all European support for four of Cook’s business units – Endoscopy, Urology, Women’s Health and Surgical. This includes manufacturing, distribution, sales and marketing. In addition, the company’s European Shared Service Centre provides customer service across a dozen European countries as well as sales, IT, finance, HR and administrational support for all seven of Cook’s business units, comprising of; Endovascular Therapies, Women’s Health, Urological, Surgical, Critical Care, Diagnostic & Interventional and Endoscopy.

“We’re both excited and honoured to receive two such prestigious awards,” says Bill Doherty, Executive Vice President, COOK Group Europe. “It’s a real endorsement for the success we are enjoying as a company – a European success story that stems from our growing operation in Limerick. Our sales operation has doubled in a four-year period. This has been matched by a corresponding increase in the number of employees – it’s been a consistent effort from all Cook employees over this time.”

“Our operation continues to revolve around the patient, whom we put first in all we do. This ethos will continue to permeate all the company’s activities throughout the lifetime of a device – from initial research, through to product development, to manufacture and its eventual sales and support. We’re looking forward to raising the benchmark going forward.” Doherty concludes.

About Cook Incorporated With international headquarters in Bloomington, Ind., COOK® (www.cookgroup.com), the world’s largest privately held medical device manufacturer, is a leading designer, manufacturer and global distributor of minimally invasive medical device technology for diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Since its founding in 1963, COOK has created innovative technologies for stents and stent-grafts, catheters, wire guides, introducer needles and sheaths, embolization coils, medical biomaterials, vena cava filters, implanted cardiac lead extraction equipment and other minimally invasive medical devices.