New letter: What Ingram Micro is now telling its partners about the sale

Paul Bay, Ingram Micro

Ingram Micro has filed another statement with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The latest filing is a letter to partners from Executive Vice President and Chief Executive, Ingram Micro U.S. & Export, Paul Bay. It continues the steady flow of filings with the Commissions since its sale to Tianjin Tianhai in February for $US6 billion.

The letter reads as follows.

Dear Valued Partners,

By now, we’ve spoken with many of you about our news to be acquired by Tianjin Tianhai and become a part of HNA Group, a Hainan-based global conglomerate. We are excited about the next chapter for Ingram Micro and are confident that through this transaction we will gain the added flexibility and the freedom to invest to even better support you in your growth and profitability objectives. During our discussions, we’ve addressed questions related to Ingram Micro’s commitment to a continued stringent focus on compliance and controls around our information systems, as well as protection of your important data. We have been able to successfully allay many of your concerns and I wanted to take this opportunity to provide you with additional assurances.

Strict adherence to compliance and controls is integral to Ingram Micro’s success throughout the world and is a part of our standard operating procedures. In fact, we hold an ISO 27001 certification to ensure our data is protected and our systems managed at the highest global standards. What this means is that our customers, business partners and affiliates of our partners can take comfort in the fact that we will follow stringent standards around data classification and strongly adhere to the Separation of Duties (SoD) and Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP) for controlled unclassified information (CUI) collected as part of our public sector business.

On another note, in our last letter to you, we talked about foreign investment in other companies in our industry. For instance, Lenovo, Acer, Asus, and Toshiba, which manufacture PCs and computing products used by many U.S. companies, are foreign owned. We didn’t mean to imply that SYNNEX had significant mainland China investment. SYNNEX is a NYSE listed, U.S.-based broadline distributor that has minority shareholders, approximately 25%, in Taiwan, as discussed in detail in its latest proxy filed with the SEC. Additionally, the parent of Westcon Group, another large technology distributor, is based in South Africa. We believe ownership is not important; rather, what’s paramount in a trusted relationship is execution and commitment to your success, which has always been Ingram Micro’s number one focus. This will not change and it continues to remain business as usual at Ingram Micro.

We are committed to serving as your indispensable business partner in the channel and we’ll remain dedicated to the core values that have made Ingram Micro an industry leader. The future looks brighter than ever for Ingram Micro and our partners, and I’m happy that you’re here to share it with us.

As always, thank you for your business and support.

Paul Bay, Executive Vice President and Chief Executive, Ingram Micro U.S. & Export