Sonepar SA reported a 10% increase in its global sales to €16.3 billion in 2012 (approximately $21.3 billion). 2012 was yet another busy year of acquisitions for the Paris-based company. Its biggest purchases were Grupo Rosa Leal in Brazil; Codale Electric Supply in the U.S.; DEP Engineering in Thailand; and Corys Electrical in New Zealand, which brought Sonepar an additional €500 million (approximately US $653.96 million). The Corys Electrical acquisition in New Zealand enlarged the group’s geographic footprint to a total of 36 countries. The company’s global sales are broken down regionally as follows: 33% Northern Europe; 35% North America; 25% Southern Europe; and 7% Asia-Pacific. Details
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Jim Lucy Blog
Chief Editor
Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.