L'Oral to Buy Yue-Sai Make-Up Brand

L'Oréal has signed an agreement to buy Chinese make-up brand Yue-Sai, its second deal with a Chinese cosmetics company in the last two months as L'Oréal looks to step up the pace of its growth in that market.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Yue-Sai had worldwide sales last year of less than 38 million euros ($30 million U.S. dollars) and is a division of perfume-maker Coty.

Yue-Sai was founded in 1992 by Yue-Sai Kan, a well-known Chinese personality who was educated in the West. The brand is sold in 800 department stores located in 240 of China's largest cities.

In December, Paris-based L'Oréal announced its takeover of Mininurse, a Chinese cosmetics and skincare brand. L'Oréal has been operating on the Chinese market since 1997.

L'Oréal grew China-based sales to 159 million euros last year and said that since 1997 sales had grown 69%, according to news reports.

China is now the world's eighth largest and Asia's second-biggest cosmetics market after Japan.