Yahoo Finance Hungry Nomad Foods ready to start M&A shopping again
* Has about 500 to 600 mln euros to spend on acquisitions
* Frozen food in Europe is most obvious target
* Plans to adopt light version of zero-based budgeting (Adds more comments, byline, bullet points)
By Martinne Geller
LONDON, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Nomad Foods is ready to start looking at more acquisitions now that it has integrated last year's purchase of Findus Group's European businesses, Chief Executive Stefan Descheemaeker said on Thursday.
Founded last year by serial dealmakers Martin Franklin and Noam Gottesman as a vehicle to consolidate the frozen foods industry, Nomad has spent this year combining Findus with its existing business from Iglo Group.
The maker of frozen fish fingers and vegetables now has the right people and processes in place to successfully turn around future deals, Descheemaeker told Reuters.
"We are starting to be more attentive," Descheemaeker said, noting that the most obvious target would be mid-sized frozen foods makers in Europe, where it would have the most synergies.
The company currently has about 500 million to 600 million euros ($564-$677 mln) to spend on acquisitions without having to raise more capital, he said.
Nomad posted a 6.6 percent drop in second-quarter revenue on Thursday to 455.9 million euros.
Its shares were still up 8.6 percent in New York at $10.73.
FAMILIAR STRATEGY
Descheemaeker, a Belgian citizen, used to manage M&A at Belgium's Interbrew and oversaw its marriage to Brazil's Ambev. He remains on the board of directors of the resulting company, Anheuser Busch InBev, the world's largest brewer.
He said his approach to deals is similar to that used by ABI and its Brazilian controllers who run private equity firm 3G Capital. They are known for buying companies and ruthlessly managing costs, and have popularized "zero-based budgeting" in which all annual expenses are justified each year.
"The synergy game is totally the same," Descheemaeker said about generating growth by building scale. But because Iglo and Findus were previously owned by private equity firms, they were already run leanly and have fewer costs to cut.
"We're going to do ZBB but probably in a lighter way," he said, adding that growth is the top priority. Specifically, he is focused on certain "must-win battles" such as peas in the United Kingdom, where he aims to increase market share.
Once strengthened, he said Nomad would be in a better position to grow the overall market and can look to move on to other categories and regions.
($1 = 0.8866 euros) (Reporting by Martinne Geller in London; editing by Susan Thomas and Alexandra Hudson)
