44 acquisitions in February

Despite a gap in the middle of the month, February still notched up 44 food and drink sector transactions on the bevblog.net mergers and acquisitions database.

4 were worth over $1 billion in value:

• $43,800 million for ChemChina’s purchase of Switzerland’s Syngenta agribusiness

• $3,100 million for US Sysco’s foodservice takeover of Brakes in UK

• €2,550 million for Japan’s Asahi to buy the Grolsch, Meantime and Peroni beer brands from Anheuser-Busch InBev

• $2,000 million for Adeptio private equity business to acquire 69% of Kuwait Food Company.

Of the 44 total, 11 were in soft drinks, 10 in ingredients, 6 in alcohol and 5 in dairy.

19 were inside national boundaries, 13 of them within the United States. 25 were cross border, including 12 more for the United States, 6 for Switzerland, 5 for France, 4 for the United Kingdom and 3 each for Belgium and China.

The only major omission is that no price was disclosed for World Peas.