Mergers and acquisitions activity in Latin America and the Caribbean is on track for growth in the third quarter of this year, led by cross-border deals for diversification and a pickup in Argentina, experts say.
“This is going to be a better year than last year,” says Antonio Coutinho, Citi’s head of investment banking in Brazil.
Two trends are driving this growth. The first is that more companies are buying outside their borders, including in the United States, to diversify their markets and secure revenue streams in more stable currencies to balance the volatility in Latin America.
“This is something new,” Coutinho says.
In June, Brazilian pulp and paper giant Suzano agreed to team up with US-based Kimberly-Clark on a hygiene products venture, paying $1.7 billion for a 51% stake. The company will operate plants in 14 countries, including in Central and South America. In other deals, Brazilian family office BW Gestão de Investimentos to increase its ownership in the French glass packaging maker Verallia, while the Guatemalan conglomerate Castillo Hermanos bought the beverage company Harvest Hill in the United States and Brazil’s Granja Faria, part of the Global Eggs group, acquired Hillandale Farms in the United States.
The second trend is a resurgence in dealmaking in Argentina, where the economy is recovering robustly from a six-year financial crisis. There have been two deals for more than $1 billion there: Mexico-based Vista Energy’s $1.5 billion acquisition of a 50% stake in a shale oil field in northern Patagonia from Malaysia’s Petronas, and Telecom Argentina’s $1.25 billion purchase of the local operations of Spain’s Telefonica.
These high-ticket deals helped nearly double the overall M&A volumes in the region this year through June 15, which surged to $54.9 billion from $28.6 billion in the year-earlier period on a similar number of transactions, according to data from LSEG.
Back in action
Latin American and Caribbean M&A activity over the past three years, January 1 to June 15
| Rank Date | Value (US$m) | Number of Deals |
| 2023-01-01 – 2023-06-15 | 43,847.24 | 773 |
| 2024-01-01 – 2024-06-15 | 28,590.33 | 641 |
| 2025-01-01 – 2025-06-15 | 54,923.71 | 645 |
INTO BRAZIL
Looking ahead, Pedro Muzzi, Goldman Sachs’ co-head of M&A in Latin America, says more international companies are buying in Brazil.
One example is US investment firm Global Infrastructure Partners’ acquisition of a 70% stake in renewable energy company Aliança Energia from Brazilian iron ore giant Vale for some $1 billion. The Brazilian subsidiary of French power company Engie also signed an agreement to acquire two hydro-electric plants jointly owned by Portugal’s EDP and China Three Gorges for some $520 million.
International players have “an increasing appetite for Brazil,” Muzzi says.
While Brazil is struggling with a fiscal deficit and rising debt levels, the economy is growing at a steady pace and this is opening up an opportunity for companies to buy assets in the country, he adds.
“We continue to see the pipeline of activity picking up,” Muzzi says. “It is better than it was at the beginning of the year.”
We continue to see the pipeline of activity picking up
Pedro Muzzi, Goldman Sachs
Matthew Poulter, a partner and head of the Latin America Group at Linklaters in São Paulo, says deals are being made in a variety of sectors.
“I would say that funds are definitely looking at distressed assets in certain sectors,” he says. “I would not say M&A activity is booming, but there is a healthy amount.”
ON THE LOOKOUT IN MEXICO
Mexico may also see a pickup in deals for similar reasons as in Brazil. While volatility has surged in the market as US tariffs slow the economy, opportunities can be found, says Nicolás Estrada, CFO of Vemo, a Mexican electric vehicle leasing company.
When times are tough, that’s when “you can find M&A opportunities,” much more so than in “boom times,” he says. LF