Brazil's Marfrig Global Foods has reached an agreement to acquire 51 percent of National Beef Packing Company for $969 million, becoming the world's second-largest beef processor.
The largest is JBS, also of Brazil, which is caught up in a major scandal because it bribed politicians to obtain billions of dollars in loans from the government-controlled bank.
Marfrig
intends now to sell 100 percent of Keystone, a transaction which will
further reduce its leverage to 2.5x by the end of 2018. Marfrig
previously had planned
to make an Initial Public Offering of Keystone to raise money on U.S.
stock markets.
“The
acquisition of National Beef is a unique opportunity,” said Marfrig
CEO MartÃn Secco. “With the transaction, we will have operations
in the two largest beef markets in the world, we will reach extremely
sophisticated consumer countries and we can grow by maintaining
strict financial discipline.”
