Caveat Lector
As it has many, many times before, Samsung, the world’s largest electronics company, announced in April that it is expanding.
No, that’s not exactly news, until you look at where it intends to grow: Africa.
And it’s going all in.
Well that didn’t take long.
The ink was barely dry on Bare Board Group’s purchase of Hunter Technology’s printed circuit board fabrication operations before Hunter moved to reacquire the plant. And just like that, BBG’s grand experiment as the only major regional PCB distributor to offer internal manufacturing capability was done.
Industry chatter has long said M&A activity among the major SMT placement companies is inevitable.
Yet, throughout the gut-wrenching downturn of 2001-02, the widespread pause in 2008-09, and the subsequent fallout starting last spring, nothing concrete took place.
