Parker Elects Tom Williams as New Instrumentation Group President and

CLEVELAND, March 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The Board of Directors of Parker Hannifin Corporation elected Tom Williams to the position of vice president and president of the Instrumentation Group, effective immediately. Williams, age 46, succeeds Instrumentation Group President Roger Sherrard, who recently became the company's Automation Group president.

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Williams joined Parker in 2003 as Vice President, Operations for the Hydraulics Group. Prior to that, he held a number of key management positions at General Electric. Williams earned a Mechanical Engineering degree from Bucknell University and his MBA from Xavier University.

"I'm honored to have the opportunity to serve in this leadership position and look forward to building on the success of the Instrumentation Group," commented Williams. "Our focus remains on growing the business and providing customers innovative solutions for their critical flow applications."

With annual sales exceeding $7 billion, Parker Hannifin is the world's leading diversified manufacturer of motion and control technologies and systems, providing precision-engineered solutions for a wide variety of commercial, mobile, industrial and aerospace markets. The company employs more than 48,000 people in 46 countries around the world. Parker has increased its annual dividends paid to shareholders for 48 consecutive years, among the top five longest-running dividend-increase records in the S&P 500 index. For more information, visit the company's web site at http://www.parker.com/ , or its investor information site at http://www.phstock.com/ .