Kimball To Sell Bosendorfer

[Billbrpt@AOL.COM]

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Kimball Selling Piano Division

.c The Associated Press

  
VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Kimball International has agreed to sell its famed 
Boesendorfer piano division to an Austrian bank. 

Helmut Elsner, president of the Bawag-P.S.K. bank, said Thursday that the 
sales contract will be signed in January. He declined to name the price of 
the deal. 

Under new ownership, Boesendorfer plans to increase production from the 
present 500 to 800 grand pianos a year, said company officials. 

The company now employs about 230 people, most of them in its factory at 
Wiener Neustadt, southeast of Vienna. Last year, it made a profit of more 
than $2 million on sales of more than $16 million. 

Boesendorfer and Steinway are considered the Rolls-Royces of pianos. Among 
the hundreds of virtuosi and composers associated with Boesendorfer since the 
first handmade instrument was assembled in the early 19th century have been 
Anton Rubinstein, Johannes Brahms and Bela Bartok. 

Boesendorfer first gained fame in the early 1800s, after contemporaries of 
Franz Liszt praised it as being the first piano that was able to stand up to 
the punishment meted out by the Hungarian maestro. 

Kimball acquired Boesendorfer in 1966.



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