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BUILDING-MATERIALS FIRM CRH has struck a deal to offload over €500m in its clay and concrete operations in the UK and US.
The company, Ireland’s biggest firm by turnover – worth some €18 billion last year – announced this morning it was selling four businesses for a total of £414 million (€522 million) to private investment firm Bain Capital.
The sale includes its UK and US clay businesses, as well as two concrete firms across the channel. The combined operations turned a pre-tax profit of £16 million (€20.2 million) last year.
CRH said Bain would take over “certain debt and pension liabilities” for the operations it was selling so the total cash it would get for the trade was £295 million (€372 million).
The deal is expected to be finished in the first half of 2015 subject to regulatory approval.
But it has recently been unwinding some of its deals as part of a plan to shed up to €2 billion in peripheral businesses under new chief executive Albert Manifold. The latest sale takes the total realised so far to about €900 million.
CRH chief executive Albert Manifold, centre, with the man he replaced in the job, Myles Lee, right Laura Hutton / Photocall Ireland
Laura Hutton / Photocall Ireland / Photocall Ireland
Last year CRH recorded a pre-tax loss of €215 million after a decade of profits. The previous year it made €674 million.
CRH was formed in 1970 through the merger of Irish Cement and another Irish company, Roadstone. At the time, it was the only cement producer in the country.
It now has operations in 35 countries and employs about 76,000 people.
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CRH Plc does enjoy immunity from investigation. In line with Ansbacher Whistleblower, Gerard Ryan’s experience, the Gardai, Moriarty Tribunal, ODCE and Revenue have failed to investigate CRH Plc or have had investigations pulled. We can also add the Competition Authority to this list. Richard Bruton, who is a CRH Plc shareholder formerly worked as an economist with CRH Plc, sat on the Gerard Ryan Ansbacher file for two years and is currently, along with Enda Kenny, preventing any investigation into a host of allegations of criminality on the part of CRH Plc and its associates. Michael Martin and FF did ditto as did the Progressive Democrats. When Labour Party hierarchy were presented with a file on CRH Plc, the answer was “we cannot go there”. As Marcellus said:-”Something rotten in the State of Denmark”
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