Louis Dreyfus Commodities revealed it stood ready to extend the wave of consolidation among agribusinesses, unveiling a $7bn warchest, underpinned by the trader’s first access to capital markets in its 160-year history.
The farm commodities trading giant, which earlier this month agreed to buy US sugar refiner Imperial Sugar for $203m including debt, said it was to spend $7bn building assets and buying companies, following investment of $4.9bn in the 2006-11 timespan.
“We will be certainly making more acquisitions that we have done in the past,” Serge Schoen, the Louis Dreyfus chief executive, told the Financial Times newspaper.