CRH shareholders voted overwhelmingly at an extraordinary general meeting in Dublin on Thursday to back a €6.5 billion acquisition by it of assets currently owned by its industry rivals Holcim and Lafarge, despite uncertainty surrounding whether the deal will go ahead.
Albert Manifold, the chief executive of CRH, said he asked for an update prior to the EGM about talks between executives of the Swiss company Holcim and its French peer Lafarge, who are in last-ditch discussions to save a €40 billion merger that is a prerequisite for the CRH deal to proceed.
“We have constant dialogue with senior executives [from Holcim and Lafarge],” said Mr Manifold.
“I spoke to them this morning. They are in ongoing negotiations and it would be inappropriate for me to comment further on those.”
Holcim is seeking a bigger slice of the proposed merger while its executives are also understood to want a change in the planned leadership of the merged company, which was to have been run by Lafarge chief executive Bruno Lafont.
If both sides fail to reach agreement and the merger is scuppered, CRH is due a break fee of about €158 million.
The Irish building materials giant is due to snap up assets from the merged entity as part of a divestment deal to get the merger past competition authorities. These include facilities in Europe, Canada and the Phillipines.
More than 99 per cent of CRH’s shareholders voted in Dublin on Thursday to back the deal.
Mr Manifold said that if the deal with Holcim-Lafarge falls down, CRH would continue to grow through acquisition: “That deal is an important part of the strategy, but it is not the [whole]strategy.”
He insisted that in the event the deal is scrapped, the company would still be capable of deploying the capital it has raised for the Holcim-Lafarge transaction.
“But I’d never give a timeline for deployment,” he said.
Mr Manifold said the assets it is due to buy are “excellent” and indicated that if the deal fails, CRH would retain an interest in buying some or all of them, although it would have to open fresh negotiations with both its European peers.
“But we’re working on the basis [the deal]will close,” he said.
