【英语财经】Lex专栏：海航为何收购美国英迈？ Lex: Ingram Micro: hunger games

Say what you will about China’s economic indigestion, its appetite for overseas companies only grows. Late on Wednesday Ingram Micro, a US information technology company, said it had agreed to be bought by Shanghai-listed Tianjin Tianhai, a container shipping and freight agency business. The $38.90-a-share all-cash deal values the target at $6bn, a premium of nearly one-third to the undisturbed share price.

That should please Ingram’s shareholders; at 12 times 2016 earnings, the price represents Ingram’s highest multiple since 2010. Viewed against peers, the valuation is one-third above Taiwan’s Synnex, but less than Chinese domestic peer Digital China on 22 times. Ingram has more globally diversified revenues than these Asia-centric rivals.

Still, as a low-margin distributor of IT products, Ingram may seem a strange choice of target for a shipping company. But Tianjin Tianhai is part of Chinese conglomerate HNA, whose operations run from aircraft leasing to hotels and property development. As well as supply-chain management, which dovetails with HNA’s logistics and payment businesses, Ingram provides cloud storage solutions — which it has been expanding into China. The country needs to upgrade its IT capability as it tries to modernise sluggish state-owned enterprises.

Yet Ingram’s move away from IT hardware middleman to provider of software solutions — the attribute that makes it attractive to China — might also make it a sensitive deal for the US. Services such as on-site data destruction and data storage offer Ingram access to industrial information across a wide range of US businesses. America’s risk-averse Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has unpredictable sensitivities when it comes to security. Last year, Micron rebuffed overtures from Tsinghua’s Unigroup, fearing the $23bn deal would not get clearance — although the CFIUS did clear the sale of chip designer Integrated Silicon Solutions, a supplier to the communications industry, to a Chinese acquirer.

The boards of Ingram Micro and Tianjian Tianhai have both agreed the deal, which may ease its passage. If cleared, it will be the largest Chinese acquisition of a US technology target, according to Dealogic. Should China have its way, there will be more ahead.

无论你怎么看待中国经济的消化不良，它对海外企业的胃口都只会越来越大。周三晚，美国信息技术公司英迈(Ingram Micro)称，同意在上海上市的天津天海投资(Tianjin Tianhai)对其的收购。后者是一家经营集装箱运输和货运代理的企业。每股38.90美元的全现金收购使得英迈的估值达到60亿美元，较消息公布前的英迈股价高出近三分之一。

这应该会令英迈的股东感到高兴；该交易价格是其2016年预期盈利的12倍，相当于自2010年以来英迈最高的市盈率。与同行企业对比来看，该估值比台湾联强国际(Synnex)高三分之一，但低于中国国内企业神州数码(Digital China)，后者为22倍。与这些以亚洲为中心的竞争对手相比，英迈的收入更具全球多样性。

不过，作为利润率较低的信息技术产品经销商，英迈对于一家航运公司来说或许是个奇怪的选择。但是，天津天海投资隶属于中国综合企业海航集团(HNA)，后者的业务林林总总，包括飞机租赁、酒店、房地产开放等等。英迈的供应链管理业务与海航的物流和支付业务相吻合，此外英迈还提供云存储解决方案——它正在将该业务扩展至中国。在尝试对不景气的国企进行现代化改革之际，中国需要升级信息技术能力。

不过，英迈从信息技术硬件中间商转向软件解决方案提供商的战略——该定位使其对中国拥有吸引力——或许也会使之成为对于美国而言敏感的交易。现场数据销毁(on-site data destruction)和数据存储之类的服务使英迈能接触到美国各类企业的行业信息。当涉及到国家安全时，厌恶风险的美国外国投资委员会(CFIUS)敏感得令人难以捉摸。去年，美光(Micron)断然拒绝了清华紫光(Tsinghua Unigroup)的收购提议，担心这笔总值230亿美元的交易无法得到批准——尽管CFIUS之前批准了一家中国企业收购芯片设计公司、通信行业供应商Integrated Silicon Solutions的交易。

英迈董事会和天津天海投资董事会均同意这笔交易，这或许有利于交易获批。Dealogic表示，如果该交易获得批准，它将成为中国企业收购美国科技企业的最大一笔交易。如果中国能够得偿所愿，那么未来还会有更多动作。

Lex专栏是由FT评论家联合撰写的短评，对全球经济与商业进行精辟分析

译者/马柯斯