Bell Microproducts has bought Manchester distie OpenPSL Ltd for $36m (£19.8m) in a mixture of cash and shares. Bell expects the deal will be accretive to earnings. OpenPSL expects revenue of around $209m (£115m) for the year ending July 2004.

OpenPSL employs 160 people and has offices in Bracknell, Dublin, Ireland, Leeds and Nottingham, and head offices in Manchester. It has six divisions; Enterprise, Commercial, Partner Services and Security. There is also an Irish division specialising in HP and Oracle products and an IBM division. As well as distributing products it offers resellers training, hosting services, security and storage services.

Graeme Watt, European president of Bell Microproducts, told The Register: "OpenPSL has got a very successful track record in the mid to high-end enterprise market, especially servers, and in security and database management. With our strength in mid to high end storage they perfectly complement our business. The other major opportunity is to take that combined business to continental Europe."

The company is considering more acquisitions in continental Europe, he added. ®

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