The top executive of Cargill Inc., the giant commodities trader, has told Bloomberg that it wants to make acquisitions even while it expands its existing operations.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Greg Page, in an interview with the news and data service in New York, said the Minnetonka-based company needs to grow at 3 1/2 times the speed of global domestic product to meet its owners' expectations.
And that, Page said, probably means 40 percent of the expansion would come through deals, rather than through its own expansion, also known as organic growth.
"If you do that all organically, it's going to be tough," he told Bloomberg.
In August, Cargill reported weak financial results, with quarterly earnings of $73 million, down 82 percent from a year earlier. It was the company's worst quarterly showing since the end of fiscal 2001.
Cargill, one of the world's largest privately held companies, plans to spend virtually all of the capital it deploys in the year through May 2013 on organic growth, Bloomberg reported.
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