After watching too many major Tampa Bay corporations sell out to other businesses in recent years, it’s a pleasure to see a few of the bigger companies still here pursue serious acquisitions of their own.
Case in point: Tech Data Corp. The IT products distributor this week said it will pay $2.6 billion to buy Technology Solutions, a unit of Phoenix-based Avnet. The deal, Tech Data’s largest, will boost the Clearwater company’s annual revenues to $35 billion from $26 billion, bump its employees to more than 14,000 from 9,000 and push the business into 35 countries (including into Asia for the first time) from today’s 21 countries.
