Yes, I read that earlier today and found it very encouraging on...

Yes, I read that earlier today and found it very encouraging on almost every level. I also found interesting another article on Exeed, one of DD's main competitors in NZ, who have HP as a vendor, which DD sorely wants/needs. Here is an extract:

Hitting back at Dicker’s HP comments
Meanwhile, Tye also took the chance to hit back at David Dicker, Dicker Data chief executive who has been making his desire to gain HP distribution for New Zealand clear.
At last week’s rebrand of Express Data to Dicker Data New Zealand, Dicker said not having the HP agency in New Zealand was ‘crap’ given Dicker Data is HP’s biggest customer in Australia and ‘we should have HP’.
Says Tye: “I can understand the frustration of not being able to pick up the agencies you would like to have. But just because you are established in the Australian market with a vendor it doesn’t give you automatic rights to the agency in New Zealand.
“It’s a small market, it doesn’t make sense to over-distribute unless there are clearly identified, unaddressed gaps, and I don’t believe there are.”
Exeed has worked with HP for 13 years, and Tye says the distributor ‘has done a pretty decent job of helping them achieve the market share they enjoy today’.
“I don’t think there’s a compelling reason for any change, but that’s up to the vendors ultimately.”
“There’s so much activity in the industry press about his ambitions, I think it’s time a few of us who are incumbents countered the views he has.
“We are always wary, these are large agencies to us,” Tye adds.
He says there may be opportunity for further consolidation in the sector ‘but that’s probably the only way you’re going to see any significant change from a vendor perspective, I would have thought’.

It's this last statement I find quite interesting, I don't have any current information to hand about the size / value of Exeed, but this could be another company transforming acquisition for DD should he desire and if it was allowed in NZ. (The latest information I could find about Exeed is that it employed about 55 people and turned over about $160m).