Turkey: Oyak Group, Turkey's military pension fund, has US$2bn in cash for acquisitions and may spend some of it on assets being divested by Lafarge and Holcim.

Oyak is interested in Holcim and Lafarge businesses in countries including Romania, Serbia and Hungary, according to Celal Caglar, Oyak's head of the cement and automotive unit. Holcim and Lafarge need to sell units to gain regulatory approval for their planned merger to form LafargeHolcim. In Europe, regulators have set a 15 December 2014 deadline to either approve the deal or open a deeper investigation.

"We are interested in bidding as Oyak or together with a European group," said Caglar. Oyak has US$2bn in cash for acquisitions and can leverage it more than five times if needed, he added. "We are closely following the sale process."

On 10 November 2014 Oyak completed the purchase of Turkey's Denizli Çimento from Ireland's CRH and Turkey's Eren Holding AS for between US$400m and US$450m, as part of Oyak's expansion plans. Oyak has a cement production capacity in Turkey of 20.1Mt/yr, or 19% of the country's market share, through its six plants, including Denizli. It has a clinker production capacity of 10.3Mt/yr, or 15% of Turkey's total. Oyak expects Turkey's cement market to grow by 5% in 2015 after an estimated 6% in 2014, helped by projects including highways, a road tunnel under the Bosporus, stadium constructions and new metro lines.