Two of the world’s top electronics distributors announced acquisitions in Asia this week, adding to each company’s global product and service offering.
Avnet, Inc. announced its offer to purchase all outstanding shares of Internix, Inc., a publicly traded company on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The deal expands Avnet’s electronic components distribution business in Japan, adding complementary suppliers and an experienced engineering team.
"This acquisition is another step in our multiyear strategy to expand our business in the sizeable yet fragmented Japan distribution market," Harley Feldberg, president of Avnet Electronics Marketing, Global said in a statement announcing the deal.
With operations in Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, the People's Republic of China and Thailand, Internix distributes active and passive components from companies such as AKM, Cirrus Logic, Honeywell, Maxim, Microchip, Microsemi, RICOH and SMSC. With approximately 280 employees, most with engineering backgrounds, Internix provides sales, design, support and services to a wide range of OEM customers in Japan and their operations throughout the region. The company has sales of approximately $260 million.
Avnet’s tender offer was unanimously approved by Internix’ board of directors and is expected to be completed by the end of August.
In other news, British distribution giant Premier Farnell completed its purchase of Shenzhen Embest Technology Co. Ltd., a provider of embedded system development boards and tools as well as design engineering services. Based in China, Embest will support Premier Farnell customers around the world.
The acquisition enhances Premier Farnell’s product and service offering, adding a unique portfolio of embedded design capabilities that add value at every stage of a customer’s design process, company leaders said.
Embest has more than 12 years’ experience in embedded systems design and is a leader in ARM-based embedded systems. With more than 130 employees, most of whom are design engineers, Embest serves 20,000 customers in China.
The acquisition will also add to the element14 Community and the Knode, element14’s unique online workspace for engineers.
“This pivotal acquisition demonstrates our substantial commitment to attracting new design engineering customers and taking a bigger market share in the dynamic and rapidly expanding Asian market,” Laurence Bain, Premier Farnell’s chief executive officer, said in a statement announcing the deal. “Embest has been a strategic partner of ours for a number of years and we share many complementary relationships with global leaders such as ARM, Freescale, Atmel, TI and NXP. This deal connects our component and board-level portfolio with Embest’s expanded offering in systems-level solutions, including embedded software, embedded OS and hardware development. We are now in a unique position to offer our global customers complete solutions from concept definition and design start through to prototype. These capabilities are particularly attractive to our supplier partners, who are focused on attracting customers at the start of the design cycle.”
