Displaying items by tag: Shares

Canada/France: Pension investment management companies La Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments) have each purchased a minority stake in France’s Fives. CDPQ and PSP Investments will each acquire a ‘significant’ minority stake in Fives, which will remain controlled by its management, to support its next development phase. Ardian, an investment house, will continue to be part of the new shareholding structure, as a minority co-investor. The completion of the transaction remains subject to approval by relevant regulatory authorities. No value for the deal has been disclosed.

“We are very enthusiastic to enter a new phase of our development with CDPQ and PSP Investments. Their long-term approach to investment, their deep valuable industrial insights and their strategic vision aligned with that of the management team make them ideal partners for the group, allowing Fives to take advantage, at a global scale, of the full potential of our diversified operations,” said Frédéric Sanchez, chief executive officer (CEO) of Fives Group.

Founded in 1812, engineering company Fives designs and supplies machines, process equipment and production lines for industries including cement, minerals, aluminium, steel, glass, automotive, aerospace, logistics, energy and sugar. The group is located in over 30 countries and it has nearly 8400 employees.

Chile: Invesa has launched a public offer to increase the shares its holds in Cementos Bío Bío. The move follows its acquisition of a 13.1% share in the cement producer from Brazil’s Votorantim for around US$46m in November 2017, according to the Diario Financiero newspaper. The latest acquisition bid could see Invesa hold a 79% share of Cementos Bío Bío, combining other shares owned by other business that the Invesa family owns.

Argentina/US: Loma Negra has set the price of its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. It plans to raise about US$954m from the sale. Most of the proceeds will go to InterCement Brasil, Brazil’s second-largest cement producer, which owns 99% of Loma Negra, according to Reuters. The rest will go to Loma Negra.

Founded in 1926, Loma Negra is vertically integrated cement and concrete company based in Argentina. It also owns a 51% stake in a cement plant in Paraguay.

India: JSW Cement plans to invest around US$277m towards increasing its production capacity and it is considering an initial public offering (IPO) in 2019 or 2020. The cement producer wants to increase the cement production capacity to 2.2Mt/yr in 2018 from 1Mt/yr at its Dolvi grinding plant in Maharashtra, according to the Press Trust of India. A further expansion to 4.5Mt/yr is scheduled for 2019.

"We expect huge demand for cement in the country and plan to expand our cement manufacturing capacity from 12.5Mt/yr to 20Mt/yr by 2020. We are adding 4.5Mt/yr at our Dolvi unit in Maharashtra and 1.2Mt/yr at out Vijaynagar unit in Karnataka, apart from 1.2Mt/yr adding at our Odisha unit,” said JSW Cement’s managing director Parth Jindal. He added that the company would wait for the outcome of the general election in 2019 and create a ‘healthy’ financial profile before launching the IPO. After raising money in the offering the company plans to reach a 30Mt/yr capacity by 2025 and 50Mt/yr in 2030 both through new builds and acquisitions.

Argentina/US: Loma Negra aims to generate up to US$800m in an initial public offering in Argentina and the US. Around US$700m of the money raised will go to its parent company Brazil’s InterCement, according to Reuters. InterCement is selling a 32% stake in the company to pay its debts. Subsequently it will hold a 57% stake in the Argentine cement producer. No schedule for the transaction has been disclosed.

Mexico: Cemex has sold its remaining direct 9.47% stake in Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua (GCC) for around US$168m. Proceeds from the sale will be used for debt reduction and for ‘general’ corporate purposes. However, the Mexican cement producer will continue to hold a 20% indirect stake in GCC through its subsidiary Camcem.

China: China National Building Material (CNBM) and China National Materials Company (Sinoma) have entered into a merger agreement. The exchange ratio has been set at 1 Sinoma share to exchange for 0.85 CNBM share. After the merger is completed Sinoma will be absorbed into CNBM. Merger preparations for the two state-owned companies have been on going since mid-2016 when the Assets Supervision and Administration Commission announced the move.

CNBM is the largest cement company in the country with a reported total production capacity of around 409Mt/yr. Sinoma is a cement engineering company and the fourth largest cement producer in China with a total production capacity of approximately 112Mt/yr. The merger is part of the government’s plans to consolidate production domestically and refocus its industries internationally as part of the ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative.

South Africa: Canada’s Fairfax Financial Holdings has made an offer of US$154m to buy a stake in PPC on condition that the cement producer agrees to a merger with AfriSam. Fairfax will also invest a further US$309m to pay off AfriSam debts to aid the deal, according to the Cape Times newspaper. The proposed merger ratio is based on 58% PPC and 42% AfriSam.

PPC said to its shareholders that it had received two other offers from trade buyers about a ‘pan-African combination’ with PPC. It added that although it had yet to ‘fully consider’ the Fairfax proposal, the offer was ‘fundamentally’ undervalued.

Azerbaijan: The Board of Directors of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has declined to increase its participation share in the capital of Holcim Azerbaijan to 20%. No reason for the refusal has been disclosed. The bank currently holds a 10% share in the cement producer, according to Trend News Agency. The EBRD has been considering increasing its share in the cement producer since mid-2016. It said that it would continue its support in the development of Azerbaijan’s non-oil sector. Holcim Azerbaijan’s main shareholder is LafargeHolcim. It owns a 66% of the company. The bank expects government infrastructure projects to pick up the sector in the medium to long term.

Nigeria: LafargeHolcim plans to dissolve its subsidiary Holcim Nigeria. The cement producer will present the final accounts of Holcim Nigeria as part of a voluntary winding up process at a meeting of shareholders in late August 2017, according to Reuters. LafargeHolcim will take on the shares of the unit when it closes. Holcim Nigeria became a part of Lafarge Africa following the merger of Lafarge and Holcim in 2015 and it originally owned a stake in the United Cement Company of Nigeria (UNICEM) along with Lafarge.