Bimbo Clinches Weston Assets in $2.4bn Deal

As first reported by LatinFinance on December 4, Bimbo, LatAm’s largest confectionary and baked goods company, has agreed to pay $2.38bn to buy the US fresh bread assets of Canada’s Weston Foods it didn’t already distribute. The deal includes the US brands Arnold’s, Boboli, Brownberry, Entenmann’s, Freihofer’s, Stroehmann and Thomas’. Bimbo first acquired the company’s western US distribution assets in 2002. It has since sought to increase its stake of the US bread market, and this deal, which also gives it 4,000 distribution routes and 22 factories in the US, propels Bimbo into a new class of LatAm multinationals with large exposure to multiple geographies. “This is the largest deal in the history of Grupo Bimbo and one of the largest in the bread industry,” says Bimbo CEO Daniel Servitje in a release issued Wednesday morning. Bimbo hired New York boutique Atlas Strategic Advisors for M&A advice. Legal advice came from Cleary Gottlieb, Ritch Mueller and White & Case. Bimbo shares traded down 3.4% on the news.