Shareholders of Canada’s largest grain handler, Viterra Inc., voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday in favor of a friendly takeover bid by Swiss commodities trader Glencore International Plc., pushing the biggest deal in years for the global agricultural sector closer to reality.
In Canada and Australia, where Viterra is strong, “ADM, Bunge and Cargill will take notice of Glencore,” said Horst Hueniken, a former analyst based in Toronto who is working to launch a global agricultural hedge fund.
“The other concern will be that Glencore will continue to grow and start penetrating markets beyond Canada, parts of the U.S. and Australia,” he said.
Glencore’s move comes in one of the busiest merger and acquisition periods for agriculture since the late 1990s as improving diets and incomes in countries like China and India stoke interest in grain companies.