Has Avnet come on to the Irish Horizon?

YESTERDAY WAS the day that gigantic US distributor Avnet closed its acquisition of semiconductor distributor Azzurri. And it was the day the Inq was reliably informed that Avnet is also the company behind the approach to buy Irish distributor Horizon Technology Group.

On March 13th Horizon told the city that it had received an approach valuing the company at 1.18 euro per share valuing it at around 97m euro with the warning that “the approach is preliminary in nature and is subject to a number of conditions. Accordingly, no assurances can be given that a formal offer will be forthcoming or that any transaction will occur.”

On the same day Horizon, which makes most of its money in the enterprise space announced 288 million euro revenues for the year.

Avnet has been hoovering up enterprise distribution companies in Europe. Go back to September 2007 and Avnet made a storage move when it announced it was to buy the IT solutions division of ACAL, its enterprise storage division.

In October, Avnet completed the purchase of distribtor Magirus’ Infrastructure Division, another enterprise level supplier. This, as was said at the time, combined with the ACAL acquisition raised Avnet’s European revenues to $2.5 billion.

"This move strengthens our position as a pan-European value-added distributor with industry-leading system integration, marketing, financial and technical services," said Dick Borsboom, president of Avnet Technology Solutions EMEA, also at the time

In December when Avnet completed its acquisition of ACAL IT Solutions, Mr Borsboom said: "We are executing well on our goal to be the premier, value-add distributor in Europe."

Along with Azzurri, at the component end Avnet has also bought UK based Flint Distribution and German Betronik.

In the first half of fiscal 2008 Avnet generated revenues of $9 billion. It has scheduled its third quarter financial report for April 24th.

In the channel two and two does not always make four but this time it might add up. µ