South African Internet Player Buys Into Brazil

Naspers, the South Africa-based company with major internet holdings in China, Russia and Eastern Europe, has acquired a 91% stake in BuscaPe, a Brazilian e-commerce site, for $340m. The stake belongs to Boston-based private equity firm Great Hill Partners, which is heard to have turned a profit of roughly 8x the equity capital it invested in the company. Through a series of transactions over its 4-year investment, Great Hill deployed some $35m into the company. “We think that Brazil will offer interesting investment opportunities over the next 5-10 years,” Michael Kumin, a partner at Great Hill, tells LatinFinance. At the moment, the fund does not have holdings in LatAm. Its one other investment in Brazil was in a telecom company called Vivax, which it sold to Net Servicos. Nasper is paying for the deal in cash, say people involved in the trade. Goldman Sachs advised Nasper. Citi’s US-based technology investment banking team advised Great Hill.