Equifax Inc. is buying one of its partners in Brazil, showing continued commitment to a growth plan focused on extending international reach and strategic acquisitions.
The Atlanta-based credit bureau signed an agreement earlier this month to purchase Boa Vista Serviços for 8 Brazilian reals per share, or R$3.1 billion, which comes out to about $583 million.
Equifax was a minority investor in Boa Vista for more than a decade before making the offer in December with support from Boa Vista’s other largest shareholder, the Associação Comercial de São Paulo. Combined, Equifax and ACSP have more than 40 percent equity in Boa Vista. ACSP has signed a 15-year agreement not to compete with Boa Vista, which will become a subsidiary of Equifax Brasil upon the closing of the transaction in the second quarter of this year.
Equifax has long focused on Latin America, with a strong presence in Argentina and more than a thousand employees in Costa Rica.
As the region’s largest economy, with a well-developed banking sector and sizable middle class, Brazil is a strong market for Equifax’s expanding portfolio of services, from the credit reporting it’s best known for in the U.S. to other cloud-based services including fraud prevention, marketing analytics, identity and document verification and workforce management.
According to the Equifax website, nearly 15 million people in Latin America gained access to credit using Equifax’s products in the first half of 2022.
As it continues a turnaround effort after a massive 2017 breach that led to the removal of its leadership team, Chief Executive Mark Begor said in a statement that Equifax has been prioritizing “strategic, bolt-on acquisitions.” Equifax has signed or completed 14 deals in the last 24 months, spending $4.1 billion on companies like Kount, which is building an international reach in its own right.
Equifax had more than $5.1 billion in annual revenue in 2022, employing 14,000 people across the 25 countries where it works.
