Strategy Case Study
POST ACQUISITION INTEGRATION
Republic Cement Philippines was acquired from Lafarge S.A. in September 2015 for around 1.2B Euro by CRH plc (FTSE 100 listed) and Aboitiz Equity Ventures (Philippines listed) in a joint venture. The Republic Cement footprint was a large and complex organization comprising 6 significant manufacturing sites, remote warehousing, port operations, a national supply chain and commercial organization delivering to a challenging island based archipelago.
The acquired business needed to be integrated into the shareholder operations for management and financial reporting, tax, treasury, insurance and risk management including Sarbanes Oxley compliance. To add to the complexity of the integration, the business had to be separated from an extensive Lafarge IT network. These significant integration projects needed to be run concurrently with a local de-listing process.
Each integration workstream presented significant challenges, given the buyers operate acquired businesses on a decentralised standalone basis which was very different to that of the sellers model. Moreover, managing concurrent workstreams activity added complexity and put additional pressure on resources.
In a challenging environment, under Rick's leadership the post-acquisition integration was achieved due to perseverance and strong determination to meet the timeline. Rick’s approach to project management and cross cultural team development underpinned this success.
The combined effort and commitment from the finance and IT organisation was outstanding. Of note was the IT integration which went very smoothly. Implementation of Sarbanes Oxley required a redesign of many business processes and new internal controls. A great result was achieved with a clear view on risk minimization.
Peter Edwards, CRH appointed Director of Republic Cement Inc.