Serial acquirers of consumer brands

How this is computed

• Deals counted: 296 closed deals of type acquisition, merger, bankruptcy sale or divestiture (the buyer in a divestiture is an acquirer). Spin-offs, joint ventures, rebrands and deals not yet closed are excluded.
• A brand counts as acquired when the deal lists it as an asset (432 brands) or an ownership edge citing the deal gives a controlling stake in it (421 brands); 414 appear in both. Each acquirer-and-brand pair counts once.
• The acquirer is the buyer named on the deal, not rolled up to its ultimate parent. A deal for a whole company lists the company, so the brands inside it are shown in a separate column and never added to the ranking.
• Coverage: 296 of 296 deals carry a closing date and 189 state a price. Only about 29% of ownership links carry a start date, so a brand's year comes from the deal's closing date, and brands with neither are left out of the year columns.
• Deal values are shown in the currency the deal states and are never converted, so they are only comparable within one currency.

Ranking: brands acquired

The 30 acquirers with the most brands. Of 114 acquirers in total, 65 closed two or more tracked deals.

Inside acquired companies: brands that today sit under a company the acquirer bought and are not already counted as bought directly.

Tracked acquisitions closed each year

296 dated deals closed between 1966 and 2026; the busiest year on the record is 2017 with 22 deals. Because Brandtree tracks fewer deals before about 2010, an early year with few deals reflects thinner records, not a quiet market.

Acquisitions by category

Food has the most acquired brands (115). The count here is acquirer-and-brand pairs, so a brand bought twice by different companies appears twice.

Acquirers by headquarters country

Acquirers headquartered in United States account for 229 of the brands bought, across 149 deals. The table shows the 15 countries with the most brands.

Largest stated deal values

Only 189 of 296 deals state a price. Each currency is ranked on its own and nothing is converted, so a euro deal is not placed above or below a dollar one. Enterprise-value and equity-value figures are labelled as stated.