Sources: PCM Eyeing Misco Acquisition As Part Of United Kingdom-European Expansion

PCM, which is in the midst of an aggressive European expansion, is evaluating the acquisition of the assets of Misco, a $500 million IT solution provider headquartered in the U.K., sources said.

PCM CEO Frank Khulusi is eyeing Misco, which in March was acquired by a management team backed by private equity company Hilco Capital Limited, sources said.

"It's a complex asset deal," said one channel source close to PCM. "These are cheap assets that PCM could improve upon. Misco has a lot of good people and facilities in Europe."

One potential hurdle to the deal is how large contracts with Misco customers, particularly government contracts, would be handled under an asset sale, said one source.

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[Related: PCM Accelerates European Push With $4M U.K. Solution Provider Buy]

PCM, No. 25 on the 2017 CRN SP500, would not comment.

Misco could not reached for comment at press time.

In April, PCM launched a new United Kingdom and European practice led by Donavan Hutchinson, who architected solution provider behemoth CDW's expansion into Europe with the acquisition of $850 million IT solution provider Kelway.

The potential deal would instantly give PCM more scale and global muscle with top vendors including HP, Dell EMC and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, sources said.

Misco has a large e-commerce business with 40,000 products and a solutions business that includes specialists in education, health care and government.

The company, which has operations in the U.K., Ireland, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden, also has an enterprise solutions group.

The potential deal comes just three weeks after the El Segundo, Calif.-based PCM acquired Liverpool, U.K.-based The Stack Group, a 21-person IT services firm.

The Stack Group acquisition enabled PCM to accelerate the growth of its managed services and multilingual global services desk within Europe. It also provided PCM with a U.K.-based data center to deliver cloud solutions, remote management and monitoring, managed collaboration and unified communications, outsourced help desk services, and project management.

At that time, Khulusi said PCM would continue to "look for ways to accelerate market share gains" as part of an expansion to new customers in the U.K. and European markets and as a means of better serving multinational customers in North America.

Misco, which has offices in the U.K. and Scotland, several months ago confirmed that it was closing its U.K. warehouse and distribution center in Greenock, Scotland.