CRH spent €8 billion on acquisitions in 2015

Irish building materials group CRH spent €8 billion on acquisitions last year, and disposed of €1 billion worth of assets.

In a development strategy update this morning, the company said it made €430 million from the sale of its clay and concrete products operations in the UK and its clay business in the US last year.

It also brought it approximately €530 million through several additional divestments across Europe and the Americas. These included the sale of CRH’s 45 per cent stake in French builders merchant Doras and 25 per cent stake in Israeli cement producer Mashav .

CRH had come under fire from some shareholders for retaining its stake in Mashav, as the Israeli company’s cement has been used to for a widely condemned security wall that divides Palestine and Israel.

During 2015, the company completed 20 bolt-on acquisition and investment transactions.

The company said these deals, along with the acquisition of assets from Lafarge and Holcim, the C.R. Laurence acquisition and net deferred consideration payments, brought development spend for 2015 to approximately €8 billion.

"We are pleased with our progress in 2015, which brought cumulative proceeds from our multi-year divestment programme to almost €1.4 billion, while our targeted bolt-on investments strengthened our existing businesses and complemented the major acquisition activity which saw total acquisition spend of approximately €8 billion in 2015," CRH chief executive Albert Manifold said.

With a market capitalisation of approximately €21 billion, CRH is the largest building materials company in North America and the third largest worldwide.