Colgate-Palmolive Co to buy Sanex unit for $940 million

New Delhi: Colgate-Palmolive Co agreed to buy Unilever's Sanex personal-care unit for about $940 million, pursuing its biggest purchase in more than a decade to expand in deodorant and body wash overseas.

Colgate also will sell its Colombian laundry detergent business to Unilever for $215 million. Sanex, which Unilever had to sell to allay European Union competition concerns, generated sales of about $260 million last year.

The past five years have yielded 275 deals for personal-care companies globally. The buyers in 25 of those deals paid a median of about 1.1 times their targets’ sales over that period, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Colgate paid about $1 billion for Latin American toothpaste maker Kolynos Oral Care in 1995.