PITTSBURGH — WESCO International, Inc. announced that it has reached a Consent Agreement with the Competition Bureau of Canada (“Bureau”) regarding its merger with Anixter International. As previously announced, the closing of the merger transaction with Anixter occurred on June 22, 2020 after the expiry of the applicable waiting period under Canadian competition law. WESCO has been working cooperatively with the Bureau to resolve outstanding matters, and the Consent Agreement involves a commitment to divest the legacy WESCO Utility and Datacom businesses in Canada, which had total sales of approximately $150 million in 2019. The process to divest the businesses will commence immediately and will be completed as expeditiously as possible. The net proceeds realized from the divestiture of the businesses will be used to repay indebtedness.
John Engel, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, said, “We are pleased to reach this agreement with the Commissioner of Competition and to resolve the Bureau’s remaining concerns. The Agreement does not impact the tremendous value creation opportunity of the transformational combination of WESCO and Anixter, and we continue to see significant upside potential versus our synergy targets. We look forward to providing further details about this agreement, as well as the substantial progress we have made integrating WESCO and Anixter, later this month when we announce our second quarter earnings.”
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