CARTER, LEDYARD & MILBURN ASSISTS BOWATER INC. IN SALE OF CATAWBA TIMBERLANDS

NEW YORK, January 31, 2002 -- The Wall Street law firm Carter, Ledyard & Milburn announced that it had represented Bowater Incorporated (NYSE: BOW), a leading paper company, in the sale of approximately 265,000 acres of its Catawba timberlands located in Georgia, Tennessee and North and South Carolina to investors and affiliates of Wachovia Timberland Investment Management Group, a business unit of Wachovia Bank, N.A., and John Hancock Life Insurance Company, for approximately $230 million, consisting of cash and notes.

Carter, Ledyard & Milburn corporate partners Peter P. McN. Gates and Richard G. Pierson, tax partner Howard J. Barnet, Jr., and associates James D. Reardon and Patrick D. Bowman, assisted Bowater's General Counsel Anthony H. Barash and Associate General Counsel Harry F. Geair with the transaction. Working together with Carter, Ledyard was local counsel, Harvey Templeton, of Cleveland, Tennessee. Stephen B. Schrock, of Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy LLP and C. Glenn Dunaway, of Mazursky & Dunaway, LLP, each in Atlanta, Georgia, represented Wachovia Timberland Investment Management Group. Mark Pottorff and Sharon Duvall, of Smith Gambrell & Russell, in Atlanta, Georgia, and Richard E. Teller, of Sullivan & Worchester, in Boston, Massachusetts, represented John Hancock Life Insurance Company.

Bowater Incorporated, headquartered in Greenville, SC, is a global leader in newsprint. In addition, the company makes coated and uncoated groundwood papers, bleached kraft pulp and lumber products. The company has 12 pulp and paper mills in the United States, Canada and South Korea and 13 North American sawmills that produce softwood and hardwood lumber. Bowater also operates a facility that converts a groundwood base sheet to coated products. Bowater is one of the world's largest consumers of recycled newspapers and magazines. Bowater common stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, U.S. regional exchanges and the London Stock Exchange. A special class of stock exchangeable into Bowater common stock is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSE: BWX).

Carter Ledyard & Milburn LLP (www.clm.com), established in 1854, has approximately 104 attorneys and has been headquartered on Wall Street since its founding and has additional offices in midtown Manhattan and Washington, DC. Carter Ledyard's general practice includes corporate, securities, mergers and acquisitions, private equity, litigation, intellectual property, environmental, employment, media and technology, immigration, investment regulation, antitrust, trusts and estates, maritime, ERISA, exempt organizations, real estate, tax and bankruptcy. A significant part of the firm's practice involves representing overseas-based clients and their U.S. affiliates, financial institutions and other financial services providers, governmental entities and media and technology clients.