Top-ranked Brazilian M&A advisory firm Ártica expands internationally by joining Clairfield International

Clairfield International and Ártica Investimentos are pleased to announce that Ártica has joined Clairfield as its exclusive partner firm for Brazil, boosting Clairfield’s presence in Latin America and building a presence in a key country for worldwide and in particular European investors.

Ártica Investimentos was established by three founding partners in 2014 and quickly became one of Brazil’s top-ranked M&A firms. Founding partners Luiz Penno, Diego Batista, and Ivan Barboza have built a firm with a diverse client portfolio that includes global corporations and family-owned businesses and enjoys a close relationship with important Brazilian investors. Ártica is generalist in outlook with expertise in the M&A process in all sectors, particularly in technology and healthcare as well as in education, consumer products and mining, sectors that performed relatively favorably amid recent global upheaval. The firm also has a robust asset management arm and recently began a practice in real estate advisory.

Luiz Penno

Diego Batista

Ivan Barboza

Recent transactions closed by Ártica include:

• The sale of Luandre, the largest temporary staffing, recruitment, and HR management company in Brazil, to Grupo GPS, a group with more than 86,000 employees and annual sales exceeding BRL 4 billion (USD 720 million).
• The sale of Roll-Tec Cylinders to the German Körber AG in the industrial sector.
• The sale of Pronep, one of the largest Brazilian home care providers, to the French multinational Sodexo.
• The sale of Conecta, the leading company in the Brazilian handset insurance market, to the Japanese conglomerate Itochu.
• Advisory to LatAm Airlines in a transaction whereby the French-US company WFS became LatAm’s ground-handling operator at two of its main hubs in Brazil.
• The sale of Cooper Card to Edenred and its Brazilian subsidiary Ticket Serviços.
• Advisory to Locaweb, a web-hosting company that had the most successful IPO on the Brazilian Stock Exchange this year, on its two most recent acquisitions: Social Miner and Etus.

Since its founding, the team has executed over 25 transactions worth USD 1.8 billion in aggregate value and in spite of the global situation, has an optimistic outlook for 2020 with a large volume of activity and a full pipeline. The firm recently doubled its staff to 25 and hired a marketing specialist.

Prior to the pandemic, the Brazilian economy was finally recovering after the worst financial crisis in its history. M&A activity was picking up after a recession in 2014-2016 and foreign investor interest in M&A had returned after much needed economic and tax reforms. In spite of mismanagement of the pandemic, Luiz Penno believes that the positive effects of Brazil’s monetary policy bode well for a period of sustained growth over the next five to 10 years.

Luiz attributes Ártica’s extraordinary success to the resonance of its message of valuing relationships and offering highly personalized and knowledgeable advice to all of its client pools. Luiz’s prior career as a consultant at McKinsey primed him for recognizing and reframing client issues and looking for creative solutions.

“We had been weighing our need for international partners because much our work is crossborder,” says Luiz. “We began collaborating with Clairfield in the spring during the height of the pandemic and we were impressed with the dedication throughout a worldwide crisis. In Brazil, the weak real has made Brazilian companies even more attractive targets for foreign investors, and family-owned businesses now see the advantages of having a partner to help navigate the new normal. As part of Clairfield we will be able to offer worldwide access to these clients.”

“This expansion reaffirms our commitment to a region that will be key to world economic recovery in the face of COVID,” says Alex Klemm, executive chairman of Clairfield International. “Brazil is especially important to Europe with significant direct investment in the country. We have a longstanding track record in assisting clients with inbound and outbound Brazilian transactions. With Artica we will be in an even better position to assist clients.”