At its December meeting, the Board of Directors (BoD) of Roche Holding adopted initial proposals for decision by the AGM, scheduled for 1 March 2011. Walter Frey (born 1943, on BoD since 2001) and Wolfgang Ruttenstorfer (born 1950, on BoD since 2007) have announced that they no longer wish to stand for re-election to the Board of Directors. The Board of Directors would like to thank both Members for their valuable contribution to the successful continuing development of the company.

Prof. Bruno Gehrig, Prof. Pius Baschera, Lodewijk de Vink and Andreas Oeri will be proposed for a further period of office.

The following will be nominated as new members for election to the Board of Directors:

• Paul Bulcke (born 1954), Chief Executive Officer of Nestlé since 2008
• Christoph Franz (born 1960), Chairman of the Executive Board & Chief Executive Officer Deutsche Lufthansa AG as of 2011
• Peter Voser (born 1958), Chief Executive Officer of Royal Dutch Shell plc since 2009

Additionally, the Board of Directors will propose to the Annual General Meeting that the term of office of Board members be reduced from three to two years.

About Roche
Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is a leader in research-focused healthcare with combined strengths in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. Roche is the world’s largest biotech company with truly differentiated medicines in oncology, virology, inflammation, metabolism and CNS. Roche is also the world leader in in-vitro diagnostics, tissue-based cancer diagnostics and a pioneer in diabetes management. Roche’s personalised healthcare strategy aims at providing medicines and diagnostic tools that enable tangible improvements in the health, quality of life and survival of patients. In 2009, Roche had over 80’000 employees worldwide and invested almost 10 billion Swiss francs in R&D. The Group posted sales of 49.1 billion Swiss francs. Genentech, United States, is a wholly owned member of the Roche Group. Roche has a majority stake in Chugai Pharmaceutical, Japan.