Monday, July 23, 2007

Nestle - Mergers and Divestitures - 1997-2007

Mint 24 July 2007 Pages 1 and 24

Brand Cut: After the bings, Nestle on a diet.

Nestle SA CEO Peter Brabeck made two troubling discoveries last year: They were turning out 130,000 variations of their brands, and 30% weren't making money.

After 10 years growth, CEO feels Nestle became unwieldy and slow. Now he is pushing an aggressive plan to jettison weaker brands and simplify the organisation.

Nestle's acquisitions amount to $39.4 billion and divestitures to $5.28 billion during 1997-2007.

some major deals

year acquired company value of acquisition (bil)

2001 Ralston Purina pet food $13
2002 Dreyer's Ice Cream (Part share) 7.9
Chef America snack foods
2003 Powwow water;
Movenpick ice cream 0.8
2005 Remaining portion of Dreyer's 3.0
2006 Novartis's nutrition business
Jenny Craig diet products 4.0
2007 Gerber baby foods 5.6


Nestle cut about 50 of its 1,200 subsidiaries worldwide. Barbeck says the company may eliminate more than 200, in the longer term.

Study of this company's acquisitions, divestitures and reorganisations can be a very useful and interesting case study.

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