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BDA Acquires Dukes of London

Top 40 distributor BDA (asi/137616) has announced the acquisition of UK-based Dukes of London. Financial terms of the deal, made official on Labor Day, were not disclosed.

“It is an exciting time at BDA as we continue to execute our strategy to grow our global platform,” said Jay Deutsch, CEO of BDA, in a statement. “We are very happy to add the experienced team from Dukes to BDA UK. This combination will allow us to better serve existing and new enterprise clients through in-territory support and market-specific expertise throughout the UK and Europe.”

Founded 22 years ago, Dukes of London provides clients with branded merchandise, web stores and storage facilities, among other services. In a press release, BDA said all Dukes of London employees will join BDA’s existing UK staff.

“As part of the BDA family, we are looking forward to elevating our level of service and creativity to our customers through the addition of BDA’s extensive capabilities,” said Stuart Shepherd, sales director at Dukes. “BDA’s purchasing scale and vision for a global agency that focuses on local service is going to be great for our clients.”

The Dukes of London deal is the second purchase completed by BDA in the last two months. In July, the firm acquired Boston-based Swervepoint as it expanded its operations in the northeast U.S. Washington-based BDA has offices in the UK, Manila, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and throughout North America. Counselor ranks BDA as the fourth largest distributor in the industry, after the company reported 2016 North American promo product sales of $284 million, a year-over-year gain of 3.3%.