Brazil’s JBS offers to buy local meat packer

Brazil’s JBS offers to buy local meat packer

(Reuters) – Brazil’s JBS, the world’s largest meat producer, made a bid to buy local meat packer Grupo Independencia in a cash and stock deal for 268 million reais ($142 million), the company said in a market filing on Monday.

The non-binding offer would be 135 million reais in JBS shares valued at 7.91 reais each and another 133 million reais in cash. JBS would not take on any other financial obligations in the takeover.

JBS shares on the BM&FBovespa stock exchange in Sao Paulo fell 5.9 percent to 7.21 reais in afternoon trade, while the main blue-chip index Bovespa was trading down 2 percent.

If Independencia accepts the offer, it would mark JBS’s first large-scale acquisition after a hiatus in recent years. Independencia has four slaughterhouses, most in the center-west, and two distribution centers in Sao Paulo state.

JBS rose from near obscurity out of Brazil’s grain-rich center-west to become the world’s largest meat producer in the past seven years through a series of major acquisitions, including U.S. Pilgrim’s Pride, Swift Foods and Smithfield Be

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