Brussels, 19/10/2000 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission authorised the American company Avnet Inc to acquire all of the capital in RKE systems, the European distribution subsidiary from electronic systems belonging to the German Veba, as well as certain European assets of Veba in the field of the distribution of electronic components, namely EBV, Distron, WBC and Atlas Logistic service. The operation is part of the framework of an offer made in consortium by Avnet, Schroder and the American company Arrow Electronics Inc for all the electronic activities of Veba, which will be shared between the three companies. Arrow will thus acquire these type of activities in the United States, Schroder the Memec group, representing a fraction of its European division in this sector, and Avnet the remaining divisions, namely the totality of RKE and the included assetss.
This last operation has just been approved by the Commission, the first not coming under its competence as it does not affect the European market, while the second was authorised back in September.
Thanks to the last operation, Avnet will strengthen its position in France, Spain, Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway. Generally speaking, this does not pose a competition problem due to the low level of market shares concerned. Avnet will nonetheless rank in the lead in some companies, in the company of Arrow, another world player, far ahead of most smaller and generally speaking national competitors. Nonetheless, the wholesale market of electronic components is characterised by great diversity, and distributors can be differentiated not only by their size and the geographical coverage of their activities but also by the range of products, the technical and logistic skills, focus and customer base. The Commission therefore concluded that Avnet will find itself confronted by strong competition not only from Arrow but also from multinational distributors of average size, both national and local, which are very numerous and have special assets on a heterogeneous market.