Lafarge Africa Plc has failed in its efforts to prevent the hearing of a lawsuit brought by a Nigerian company and shareholder attempting to stop its sale to Chinese company Huaxin Cement Ltd, after a judge in the Federal Court, Lagos, rejected Lafarge’s motion challenging the court’s jurisdiction to hear the matter.
Dismissing the motion for being incompetent and lacking in merit, Justice Lewis Allagoa of the Federal High Court, Lagos, made an order directing the joining of interested parties, in the suit filed by Strategic Consultancy Ltd and other legal statutes.
Strategic Consultancy Ltd filed the lawsuit on the grounds that the sale was carried out covertly without giving it or other minority shareholders the chance to purchase the shares while also being in violation of Nigeria’s Companies & Allied Matters Act, 2020.
The case has been adjourned until 11 June 2025.
Internal restructuring or takeover?
In December last year, parent company Holcim announced plans to sell its entire 83.81 per cent holding in Lafarge Africa to Huaxin Cement, a company in which Holcim itself holds a 41.5 per cent stake. Holcim Group's holding in Lafarge Africa dates back to Lafarge's 2001 and 2002 acquisition of three federal government-owned cement companies during privatisation (Lafarge and Holcim subsequently merged in 2014).
Earlier this year, a resolution passed by the Senate of Nigeria urged the federal government to stop the reported sale on the grounds of national security and economic sovereignty. However, in April Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said it had not received any formal notice regarding the sale of Lafarge Africa to Chinese investors, only of an internal restructuring.
