Cummins Inc. last week said it has agreed to provide a standby commitment in support of the previously announced restructuring plan by Irwin Financial Corp. Cummins will provide $25 million of the standby commitment. The rest will come from individual investors.

Both Cummins and Irwin Financial are headquartered in Columbus, Ind.

“IFC is the largest financial institution in our home community and the second largest in our home state,” said Tim Solso, Cummins chairman and CEO. “Given all of the chaos in the financial markets, Cummins wants to help ensure that IFC's restructuring plan works. This standby commitment expresses Cummins' confidence in IFC and IFC's management.

“Second, given the attractive stock price and the bank's long history of strong financial performance, we believe this is a good investment for Cummins.”

In other Cummins news, the company announced that Robert Bernhard, vice president for research and an engineering professor at the University of Notre Dame has been elected to the company’s board of directors.

Bernhard brings extensive scientific and technical expertise to the Cummins board. Prior to joining Notre Dame in 2007, Bernhard had a 25-year career as an engineering professor and researcher at Purdue University, where he served as assistant vice president for research from 2004 to 2007.

Bernhard becomes the 10^th member of the Cummins board and he will serve on the Finance, Governance and Nominating and the Safety, Environment and Technology committees. His term begins immediately and he will stand for re-election at the company’s annual meeting in May 2009. All Cummins directors are elected annually.

Cummins serves customers in approximately 190 countries and territories through a network of more than 500 company-owned and independent distributor locations and approximately 5,200 dealer locations. Cummins reported net income of $739 million on sales of $13.05 billion in 2007.