Brazil may be a siren calling to global pharma, but it's also a hot market for domestic companies, too. Witness home-grown Hypermarcas' $1.5 billion buyout of consumer drugmaker Mantecorp Industria Quimica & Farmaceutica. The Sao Paulo-based company will buy Mantecorp in a cash-and-stock deal designed to help it grow sales by 65 percent over the next five years, Bloomberg reports.
CEO Claudio Bergamo says that the company will spend a good part of 2011 integrating Mantecorp into its portfolio of consumer goods, drugs, cosmetics and home care products. "It is like a boa after eating a cow," Bergamo told Bloomberg. "It needs some time to digest. We will go through this digestion phase in 2011."
But it is by no means finished growing by acquisition. "Our objective is to be the great 'consolidator' of this market," Bergamo said, according to Dow Jones. Indeed, the company has racked up 10 deals for companies or specific brands, not including Mantecorp, over the past 12 months; one of those buys was generics maker Laboratorio Neo Quimica.
Hypermarcas isn't interested in foreign buyouts, however. The Brazilian economy is healthy and the nation's consumers are spending. "At this moment, there is no chance for an acquisition in another country," Bergamo told the news service. "Other companies across the globe are interested in entering the Brazilian market; our focus is also here."
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