Colgate-Palmolive: brands it owns and its ownership tree
Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE: CL) is a publicly listed company headquartered in New York, United States that owns 15 consumer brands across 3 categories, and has 4 recorded transactions.[1]
Colgate-Palmolive traces to a New York soap and candle business started in 1806 and took its present form in 1928. Oral care is its largest business, and its Hill's Pet Nutrition subsidiary is a major veterinary pet food maker.
Colgate-Palmolive acquired the French skincare brand Filorga for about €1.69 billion, its largest acquisition. It was an attempt to move into higher-margin premium skin care, a category dominated by L'Oréal and Estée Lauder.
Colgate-Palmolive bought Sanex from Unilever for about EUR 672 million. Unilever was selling because competition authorities required it to divest Sanex before it could complete its purchase of Sara Lee's personal care business, so one company's remedy became another's acquisition.
Colgate-Palmolive bought 84 per cent of Tom's of Maine for about $100 million, leaving the founders with the rest. Tom's had been built on natural ingredients and a refusal to test on animals, and the sale to a mass-market giant was contentious among the customers it had attracted on exactly those grounds.
Colgate-Palmolive acquired GABA Holding, a Swiss oral care company selling elmex and meridol through European pharmacies. The purchase gave Colgate a pharmacy channel and a specialist reputation in Europe that its mass-market toothpaste could not reach on its own. The price was not disclosed.