Avnet Partners with Sanko for Turkish Expansion

Published: January 5, 2009

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

IT master reseller Avnet is, like every other company on the planet, looking for new places to do business in this tricky global economy. That is one reason why the company's Avnet Technology Solutions, which distributes servers, storage, and other IT products made by IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and others, has ponied up some cash to take a barely majority stake in an IT distributor in Turkey.

Avnet has taken a 50.01 percent stake in Akora Technology and Industry Corporation, a reseller previously owned in full by Sanko Holding Group. Akora was founded in 2001, as the earlier IT recession was getting under way, and today sells servers, storage, workstations, and other components across Turkey through a network of 3,000 resellers. Akora, which is headquartered in Istanbul and which has offices in Ankara and Izmir, had sales of approximately $127 million in calendar 2007.

The joint venture owned by Avnet and Sanko will be called Avnet Technology Solutions Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S., and it will operate under Avnet Technology Solutions EMEA. While the financial details of the partnership were not announced, it seems clear who bought what and who now controls what. The deal has to meet the approval of regulators in the United States and Turkey, and if you are wondering why Avnet didn't just buy Akora outright, it probably has to do with politics.

Avnet says that the partnership will contribute to its profits once the deal closes, and says that it will be expanding the portfolio of wares pushed by the partnership to include more storage, networking, security, and virtualization products. The IT market in Turkey is expected to grow in the double digits over the next several years, according to Avnet.

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