LONDON â€" The German consumer products conglomerate Joh. A. Benckiser agreed on Friday to buy D.E. Master Blenders 1753, a European coffee company, for 7.5 billion euros, or $9.8 billion.
Under the terms of the deal, Benckiser, which already owns a 15 percent holding in the company, has offered 12.5 euros a share for the Dutch owner of Douwe Egberts coffee and other brands.
The bid is less than the 12.75 euro-a-share price that first was disclosed when the companies said they were in talks last month, though it is slightly higher than D.E. Master Blenders’s closing share price on Thursday.
The move is part of Benckiser’s efforts to expand its growing coffee empire, and is one of the largest deals announced so far this year in Europe.
Benckiser, which is an investment vehicle for the wealthy Reimann family of Germany, last year acquired Caribou Coffee and Peet’s Coffee & Tea for a combined $1.3 billion.
While those deals gave Benckiser inroads into the coffee shop market, the acquisition of D.E. Master Blenders will allow it to branch out into the home coffee sector.
D.E. Master Blenders was spun out of Sara Lee last summer. It makes coffee pods for Nespresso machines and owns coffee and tea brands.
‘‘Joh. A. Benckiser and its partners intend to use D.E. Master Blenders as their platform for both organic growth as well as acquisitions in the fast moving consumer goods coffee and tea categories,’’ the company’s chairman, Bart Becht, said in a statement Friday.
The takeover of D.E. Master Blenders comes at a difficult time for European deal-makers.
Local companies and their advisers have struggled during a lackluster start to the year, as confidence across the Continent has been hit by the recent banking crisis in Cyprus. In the first quarter of the year, announced mergers and acquisitions across the Continent fell 20 percent, to $181 billion, compared to the same period in 2012, according to the data provider Thomson Reuters.
In early morning trading in Amsterdam on Friday, shares in D.E. Master Blenders fell less than 1 percent. Analysts said the proposed deal still represented good value for investors, though the fact the Benckiser had lowered its initial offer took some by surprise.
“It’s a good deal, but slightly disappointing,†said Marco Gulpers, an analysts at ING Financial Markets in Amsterdam. “If the indicative price was set at 12.75 euros, you would expected management to negotiate for a higher price.â€
Lazard, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase advised D.E. Master Blenders on the deal, while Leonardo & Co., BDT & Co., Rabobank/Rothschild, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley advised Benckiser and its partners.
