Suez completes Nalco sale

France's Suez group has concluded the sale of its chemical water treatment and industrial processes subsidiary Nalco to a consortium led by the Blackstone Group, Suez said in a statement Wednesday. "Our Latin American operations will not suffer - at first - absolutely any alterations, not at the organizational level, operational level or much less in regard to customer service. If there is any alteration it will be simply to increase customer focus," Nalco Latin American managing director Sergio Sousa told BNamericas. Sousa said that Nalco's operations in the region have been growing strongly the past two years, and the perspective is that this trend will continue. Nalco's Latin American headquarters are in Sao Paulo; it has 1,200 employees in the region. In September, Suez and the consortium, which also includes Apollo Management and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, signed a memorandum of understanding for the US$4.35bn transaction. The sale is part of Suez's action plan released in January, namely, to improve profitability and strengthen its financial structure. Suez has a number of important investments in Latin America through water subsidiary Ondeo (serves 25 million residents in the region) and waste subsidiary Sita (operations in Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Uruguay). Suez posted sales revenue of 30.5bn euros (US$35.7mn) between January and September, up 4.4% from the same period last year; sales revenue contribution from its South American interests fell 28.2% to 1.3bn euros in the period due to currency depreciation there.