Chile's Cencosud in $2.5bn Carrefour deal Chilean retail giant Cencosud has announced a bold move into Colombia's supermarket sector with the $2.5bn purchase of the assets of France's Carrefour - the latest step in its strategy of expanding abroad to cash in on regional growth. The company, Chile's top retailer by sales, said in a letter to the Santiago stock exchange that it expected the deal to close by the end of the year. It has secured $2.5bn credit with JPMorgan Chase to finance the acquisition, but gave no further details. Cencosud, which recently opened South America's biggest shopping centre, the Costanera Center in Santiago, has operations in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru. It encompasses the Jumbo and Santa Isabel supermarket brands, the Easy home improvement chain and Paris department stores. In all, it employs 140,000 people and with its 736 hypermarkets and supermarkets, 82 home improvement stores, 26 shopping centres and 76 department stores, it has carved out a role as one of the region's top multinationals. Cencosud said the deal "marks a strategic entry . . . into the supermarket segment in Colombia," where it already operates Easy stores. Carrefour runs 72 hypermarkets, 16 convenience stores and four cash-and-carry stores in the Andean country. Colombia, where consumer spending and rampant growth in oil and coal production have spurred impressive growth in recent years, is increasingly being seen as a key geography for multinational deals. The economy grew almost 6 per cent last year, and Mauricio Cárdenas, the finance minister, forecasts an expansion of 4.7 - 5 per cent in 2012. Carrefour is the second-biggest company in the supermarket segment in Colombia, after Exito. This is the Chilean group's second deal in Colombia [after Easy] and ratifies its interest in investing here," said Alejandro Reyes, a trader with Ultrabursátiles, a Bogotá-based brokerage. Chile's retail sector is one of the country's most dynamic with some of its strongest brands. Cencosud has invested in supermarkets in Brazil, becoming the fourth-biggest chain by sales, illustrating how Latin American retailers are riding a consumer boom on a continent enjoying economic growth amid an expanding middle class with easy access to credit. In another sign of Latin American multinationals flexing their muscles abroad, Chile's CorpGroup last week announced the $1.3bn purchase of Colombia's Helm Bank. By contrast, European retailers are feeling the pinch as economic pain squeezes consumer spending. Carrefour, the world's second-largest retailer by sales, recently appointed a new CEO and is refocusing its international strategy on areas where it has, or can develop, a leading position.