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Stay on Corporate siteKONE Corporation and PGA European Tour player Mikko Ilonen signed on March 7, 2007 a sponsorship agreement. The signing took place in Singapore on the eve of the official start of the Singapore Masters European Tour tournament.
“We are very excited to support a young talented player, who has all the potential to become a regular winner on the European Tour. With his first European Tour win three weeks ago, Mikko has already proved that his game is about to rise to a new level,” says Tuomas Kahri, KONE Senior Vice President for Marketing and Quality. “This reflects KONE’s improving success in the global elevator and escalator markets during the last couple of years. This co-operation with Mikko Ilonen is a great opportunity for us to showcase our brand worldwide.”
“I am very pleased to work with KONE. The company has grown from a regional but determined player to a global leader. There is no point looking any further for an analogy to a players´ career,” says Ilonen. “Of course this is an encouraging thing for Finnish golf as well.”
KONE pursues further excellence very much in the same way a professional golfer seeks improvement in his game. “This sponsorship will allow us to get an insider’s view in the world of competitive sports and enable us to create a platform for our key customer activities,” says Kahri. “Golf is a widely followed and growing global sport. Working with a rising tournament golfer like Mikko allows KONE to improve its brand awareness among its key customer groups in Asia and Europe.”
Mikko Ilonen, born 1979 in Lahti, Finland, turned pro in 2001 after winning the 2000 Amateur Championship at Hoylake, Liverpool. He immediately showed enormous potential by finishing in ninth position behind David Duval in 2001 at the Open Championship at Royal Lytham & St Annes. Ilonen is also the first Finn to win a PGA European Tour event. He won his much desired first victory in February at the 2007 Indonesian Open.
For further information, please contact:
Tuomas Kahri, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Quality, KONE Corporation, +358 204 75 4460, tuomas.kahri@kone.com
KONE is one of the world’s leading elevator and escalator companies founded in Finland in 1910. It provides its customers with industry-leading elevators and escalators and innovative solutions for their maintenance and modernization. KONE also provides maintenance of automatic building doors. With approximately 800 service centers around the world, KONE delivers nearly 40,000 new elevators and escalators annually and has a maintenance base of approximately 600,000 elevators and escalators and 250,000 automatic building doors. In 2006, KONE had annual net sales of approximately EUR 3.6 billion and 29,000 employees. Its class B shares are listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange in Finland.