Sunil Madhani

Sunil Madhani has been a director of Westcoast, the Theale-based IT distributor, since November 2004, and led it as chief executive through its sale to ALSO Holding, the Swiss-listed distributor, which completed on 28 February 2025. ALSO described him as Westcoast’s chief executive in April 2026. Westcoast’s board page now lists him as regional managing director for the UK and Ireland.

The sale to ALSO

ALSO paid €553m (£480m) for Westcoast, €410.4m of it in cash and the rest in ALSO shares, according to its 2025 interim report as reported by IT Channel Oxygen. Joe Hemani, Westcoast’s founder and chairman, became a major ALSO shareholder.

Madhani told IT Channel Oxygen in May 2026 that the deal was about what distributors now have to spend on web shops, data and automation: Westcoast “wasn’t something me and Joe could have kept on going without ALSO’s support”. That investment now comes from ALSO.

More vendors, one platform

The sale has opened doors with vendors. Madhani says Westcoast has signed about 50 new vendors since February 2025. “That’s more than I’ve signed in the last 20 years, and I put that largely down to the ALSO acquisition,” he told Oxygen. In July 2026 Westcoast added Yealink to its unified communications range. In August HPE kept it as a named UK and Ireland distributor as HPE consolidated distribution across its HPE, Aruba and Juniper networking portfolios.

Westcoast’s French business has been merged with ALSO’s French operation, and its German business handed to ALSO. In the UK, Westcoast Cloud, with revenue of about £150m, is being merged into ALSO Cloud UK, which moves about a million users onto ALSO’s platform. ALSO expected both mergers to be complete by 1 July 2026, and in July it said the integration of its new UK, Irish, French and Italian businesses “remains on track”. ALSO says Westcoast performed ahead of the prior year in the first quarter of 2026.

Why it matters to the channel

ALSO calls Westcoast the UK’s largest distributor by revenue, and Westcoast has said the group’s tools will be used to drive its business with smaller customers. Its resellers were used to a privately owned distributor that competed on account management and credit. They now deal with a regional business of a group with €8.3bn (£7.2bn) of revenue in the first half of 2026, bringing its own cloud marketplace and platforms. Madhani’s stated aim is to take the second without losing the first.

Madhani has kept Westcoast’s brand and leadership in place through the sale, and has used ALSO’s backing to sign more new vendors in 19 months than, by his account, in the previous 20 years.