Lily Hughes was at the head of the table during Ingram Micro Inc.’s tough negotiations last year to acquire Indianapolis-based wholesale distributor BrightPoint Inc. for $840 million, fending off other interested bidders in the contentious process.
The BrightPoint buy added more than 25,000 customers and 100,000 distribution points across the globe.
The company, which had $6.3 billion in sales last year and earnings of $48.8 million, competes with Miami-based Brightstar Corp. for the title of the world’s largest wireless device distributor.
Instrumental
Hughes was instrumental in securing favorable financing to close the BrightPoint deal—Ingram Micro’s largest to date—and finding ways to trim six figures from the combined legal departments’ budgets.
“It’s been very gratifying to see the growth of the company,” said Hughes, who joined Ingram Micro in March 1997, a few months after it raised $392 million in its initial public offering.
Ingram initially hired Hughes to grow its legal department, which had about 20 lawyers at the time.
Now the number tops 75 across the globe.
“My responsibilities just grew over time,” said Hughes, who was recognized as a Rising Star at the Business Journal’s fourth annual General Counsel Awards on Sept. 17 at the Hyatt Regency Irvine (see related stories, pages 1, 4, 6 and 9).
Hughes is Ingram Micro General Counsel Larry Boyd’s top assistant.
She handles numerous corporate responsibilities, including maintaining regulatory compliance, overseeing public disclosures and Securities and Exchange Commission filings, interacting with investors, and working with the company’s treasury department around the world.
Scouring over the fine print of important documents is nothing new for the vice president and associate general counsel for Ingram Micro, the world’s largest technology distributor, with annual sales of about $37.8 billion in 2012 and operations in 37 countries.
Hughes, who was born and raised in a one-bedroom home without running hot water in Kowloon City, Hong Kong, became her family’s financial planner, immigration expert, and paperwork filer after they immigrated to the U.S. in 1974.
She was only 11 at the time but had the best grasp of the English language after instruction at school.
Her father, of Chinese and Filipino descent, was a street vendor and shoe repairman with a grade school education.
Her mother wasn’t even literate in her native Chinese.
“I kind of grew up fast,” said Hughes, who took plenty of knocks on the playground in Lincoln Heights for the way she talked and dressed after coming to the U.S. “I became the adult of my family.”
Her father, to make ends meet, repaired shoes during the day and bussed tables at night.
Her mother would travel downtown, get bags of clothing from the “sweat shops” and assemble them, a laborious task that paid less than $1 per item.
One packet of meat was divided up to make a week’s worth of meals for the family of five.
Her parents, despite the hardship, “really instilled in us that education is the key,” she said.
The experience left a lasting impact on Hughes, strengthening her resilience and persistence.
“That has really helped me be a better lawyer,” said Hughes, who earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a law degree from UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law.
Her life away from work is as diverse as her upbringing.
Farm Life, Teaching
When she’s not at the negotiating table or handling the regulatory rigors of a Fortune 100 company, she’s likely teaching “street law” courses to juniors and seniors at Middle College High School in Santa Ana or overseeing the harvest at her husband’s family farm in upstate New York.
Hughes splits time between her Ladera Ranch home and a vineyard in the rural town of Clyde, N.Y., where her husband’s family farm has 150 head of cattle, as well as crops of wheat, soy and corn.
Her upcoming column in California Law Magazine, titled “Working from the Farm,” advocates that companies should support in-house attorneys working remotely.
“It’s a little bit like ‘Green Acres,’ ” Hughes said. “Who would have thought I would be married to a farmer who lives in upstate New York?”
