Avnet Successfully Completes Integration of Marshall and Sterling Computer Systems; Avnet Achieves a Common Platform and Unified Team in Less Than Two Months.

PHOENIX--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 30, 1999--

Avnet Inc. (NYSE:AVT) has successfully integrated Marshall's and Sterling's systems infrastructure into Avnet Global IT (information technology) environment.

The acquisition of Marshall Industries by Avnet was completed on October 20, 1999. The conversion took place over two consecutive weekends at the end of November, merging the three companies' customer accounts, inventory files, bills of materials, EDI (electronic data interchange connections) and vendor parts databases into Avnet's real-time IT environment.

This environment comprises Avnet's communications and database infrastructures, as well as applications software user interface.

"Avnet also has integrated all Marshall, Sterling and existing Avnet employees into a combined organization. As a result of the work of 47 integration teams, every Avnet, Marshall and Sterling employee knows their individual roles and job responsibilities in this new organization," said Lori Hartman, Avnet Electronics Marketing executive vice president and project leader of the integration.

"We believe that the success of this merger would be measured by the speed and accuracy with which we integrated the two organizations," said Roy Vallee, chairman and chief executive officer of Avnet Inc.

"I am proud of the accomplishments our team has achieved, integrating our $3.5 billion Americas components business unit (Avnet Electronics Marketing Americas) with Marshall Industries, a $1.7 billion company, in only six weeks.

"These results are no accident. They come from our experience in merging Hall-Mark Electronics in 1993, a process which was refined during our Avnet Electronics Marketing restructure completed in 1999, as well as the significant IT investments we've made over the last five years," said Vallee.

"Acquisitions are part of our long-term strategy, so we will continue to streamline this integration process, which management consultants have told us is best in class. Based on the synergies achieved to date, we are on track to realize savings of $70 million in North America by the first quarter of FY 2001."

Customers who visit Marshall's and Sterling's former Web sites (www.marshall.com and www.sterlink.com) will be automatically routed to the Avnet Electronics Marketing Web site (www.em.avnet.com). The company is aggressively working to marry the best of the Marshall, Sterling and Avnet i-commerce Web offerings into a new, industry-leading i-commerce site over the next few weeks.

"This is where Avnet Electronics Marketing's new theme `More Power to You' comes into play for our customers and suppliers," said Steve Church, president of Avnet Electronics Marketing Americas and co-president of Avnet EM Global.

"Customers now have access to the products of a merged line card and industry leading value-added services. Both customers and suppliers have access to the resources of two of the best IT organizations in distribution (Information Week ranked Avnet, Inc 14th and Marshall 1st in its 1999 list of innovative IT users), and the best people and practices in the industry."

The combined Avnet and Marshall IT departments are now working as a unified team, within a single, real-time IT environment. The integration of the two systems involved the conversion of over 50,000 sales orders, 120,000 line items, 45,000 bill-to customers, 130,000 ship-to customers, 25,000 purchase orders and 60,000 purchase order line items; the addition of 180,000 new part numbers; and the conversion/creation of over 500 EDI transactions for hundreds of customers, and over 300 EDI transactions for suppliers.

In addition to completing this integration, the team also stayed the course on other critical IT projects. For example, Avnet's Enterprise Infrastructure Project (EIP), launched in December 1998, is on track, equipping all employees with common, enterprise workstations before the end of the year. The next major goal is for Avnet's entire global organization to be operating on a single IT platform.

Phoenix-based Avnet Inc., a Fortune 500 company with fiscal year 1999 sales of $6.4 billion ($8.4 billion proforma including acquisitions), is one of the world's largest distributors of semiconductors, interconnect, passive and electromechanical components and computer products from leading manufacturers.

Serving customers in 60 countries, Avnet markets, inventories and adds value to these products and provides world-class supply-chain integration, engineering design and technical services. The company's Web site is located at www.avnet.com.