Westcon leaves Landis UK floundering

Cheif exec says Westcon already has UK presence

Westcon chief executive Alan Marc Smith said the reason his firm declined to buy Landis UK assets was because Westcon already has a presence in the UK.

After months of failed negotiations, Westcon, the distribution arm of Datatec, finally announced last week that it had reached an agreement to "assume the employees and fixed assets" of Dutch networking distributor Landis for an undisclosed sum.

Under terms still being finalised, Westcon will take on part of the distribution activities of Landis in nine European countries including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden.But the struggling distributor's UK operation remains up for sale.

"We already have presence and market share in the UK and we did not see a lot of benefit from picking up the UK business," Smith said.

"We were struggling to find out how the UK organisation would fit into our strategy and decided it would not make any sense to purchase it. We are assuming the UK business will be sold to another player," he added.

Back in January, Westcon announced it had signed a letter of intent to acquire Landis. But two months later the firm ended negotiations, claiming Landis was overpriced.