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Harley Feldberg, president of Electronics Marketing, added, "One of Electronics Marketing's key growth strategies has been to expand our IP&E business in all regions. The acquisition of Abacus represents an acceleration of that strategy in EMEA as it will double our IP&E sales and bring value added capabilities to our regional portfolio. And our global supply chain expertise will expand the value provided to the entire Abacus customer base. By combining the local capabilities and relationships of Abacus with the scale and global scope advantages that Avnet offers, we will enhance the efficiency of the combined operation while providing more value to our trading partners."
By focusing on a strategy to provide highly personalized local service and strong technical support, Abacus has developed a large and diverse base of small to mid-size customers. With a team of field application engineers and product specialists deployed in 40 sales offices, Abacus provides design-in support to customers at every stage of product development. In 2007, component distribution, of which approximately two thirds was IP&E, represented 73% of revenue while embedded products and sub-assembly accounted for 27%.
Patrick Zammit, president of Electronics Marketing EMEA, stated, "We are very excited about having the Abacus team join our organization. Their relationships with a large number of customers will substantially expand our account base while the Embedded Products Group provides an excellent platform to accelerate our current embedded computing initiative. Once the integration is complete, Electronics Marketing EMEA will emerge with an industry leading portfolio of IP&E products and services which, when combined with significant cross-selling opportunities, will allow us to provide more value to customers and grow faster than the markets we serve."
Banc of America Securities Limited acted as exclusive financial advisor and Allen & Overy LLP acted as legal counsel to Avnet in connection with this transaction.
