GTM moves HQ to São Paulo, Brazil and names Jose Berges CEO

Latin American chemical distributor GTM Holdings, SA [“GTM”] (San José, Costa Rica) last week has completed the acquisition of quantiQ (São Paulo, Brazil) from petrochemical producer Braskem (São Paulo, Brazil). This follows the approval by  by the Brazilian competition authority, Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Econômica (CADE).

As part of the closing of this transaction, GTM will move its head office to São Paulo. Besides Brazil being the largest market in Latin America and quantiQ being the largest operation in the GTM platform,  the company said it considers it important to be located in the financial center of Brazil to have direct access to the most dynamic capital market in Latin America.

Michael van Marle, Chairman and CEO of GTM Holdings, has decided to transition from his current role to serve the newly combined company in an advisory capacity by remaining a board member and shareholder. Jose Berges, current COO of GTM Holdings, will assume the role of CEO.  Mr. Berges, who will be based in São Paulo, has extensive experience working at multinational companies focused on chemicals in general and specifically in Latin America.

The transaction, which was first announced in January, is valued at BRL 550 mn (Editor’s note: 1 EUR = ca. BRL 3.4 at the time of the announcement). Equity financing to support the acquisition is being provided by Advent International, the controlling shareholder of GTM and a large and experienced global private equity investor.

Source: GTM press release

HGE – DCG / 10.04.2017