Business services group DCC has agreed to sell Altimate Group - DCC SerCom's Enterprise distribution business - to Arrow Electronics for over €48m.
DCC said the deal would result in an exceptional loss of about €8m due to a writedown of goodwill since Altimate was bought in 2000.
It had reported operating profits of €3.7m for 2011.
Altimate sells a range of data management, security and virtualisation software, servers and storage products which are used in medium-sized and large organisations.
It customers are mainly based in France, Iberia, Benelux and Britain.
The deal is still conditional on competition clearance from the European Commission.
DCC said the value of the deal is €48.1m, of which €41m is payable in cash on completion. Arrow will also take on certain deferred acquisition consideration obligations of Altimate which are currently worth €7.1m.
''The disposal of Altimate is consistent with our strategy to concentrate the focus of DCC SerCom's distribution activities on its retail and reseller distribution businesses, which have strong leadership positions in Britain, Ireland and France and significant opportunities for further organic and acquisition growth," commented DCC's chief executive Tommy Breen.
