Republic Cement to be delisted from Philippine stock exchange

The Philippine Stock Exchange has approved the delisting of cement-maker Republic Cement & Building Materials Inc., formerly Lafarge Republic Inc. (LRI), effective April 25 this year.

Republic Cement, which is now 99.09 per cent owned by the consortium of conglomerates Aboitiz Equity Ventures (AEV) and British firm CRH Holdings, is exiting the local bourse after completing a voluntary tender offer to minority shareholders.

Trading on shares of Republic has been suspended since September 15. The AEV-CRH partnership in Republic was structured in such a way that there will be two symbiotic companies holding the assets.

AEV will have majority of the holding company that owns the land, quarry and mining and all other assets covered by the Constitutional restriction on the foreign ownership, while other manufacturing and sales and marketing vehicles will be folded into another holding firm to be majority controlled by CRH.

Last year, Lafarge finalised the deal to sell its Philippine unit (LRI) to the CRH-AEV consortium for around PHP59.7bn (US$1293m) for 100 percent of the cement firm. The deal was one of many divestments resulting from the LafargeHolcim merger.

AEV's investment in cement manufacturing is understood to be a strategic fifth pillar of its core businesses after power, banking, food and property development.