Sonepar's announcement earlier today that it had acquired Rosa Leal, reportedly the fourth biggest name in the Brazilian market with 12 operating companies, 700 employees and 16 branches, is the third acquisition of a Brazilian distributor this year.
As previously reported in Electrical Marketing's LiveWire, Rexel International acquired Brazil's Delamano and Etil in February, adding €100 million ($130.7 million) in sales. Rexel had also previously acquired Nortel Suprimentos Industriais, a large industrial distributor that does approximately €120 million ($156.9 million) sales.
Rosa Lisa had 2011 sales of €85 million(US $113.269) and will be adding to Sonepar's growing business in Brazil, where it has been operating since 2001. According to the press release announcing the acquisition, “The acquisition of Rosa Leal represents a logical step in Sonepar's strategy of focusing investment on high-growth countries. In keeping with its overall approach, Sonepar has continued to make targeted acquisitions based on strong partnerships with local management teams. We are confident that the teams of Rosa Leal, under the leadership of Pompeu Rosa and Miguel Leal, the two founders of the company, will bring a major contribution to our profitable overall growth in Brazil.”
The press release also said that in 10 Brazilian states that account for 80 percent of the country's economic activity, Sonepar is now present through 12 operating companies: Centelha, Dimensional, DW, Eletronor, Emel, Petrocam, Proelt, Proex, Rosa Leal Painéis, Sandler, Tecnosisa and Walter Schmidt.
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Jim Lucy Blog
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Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.