CRH comes up against a familiar stumbling block

CRH may be a global corporation but it’s a small world in the cement business.

It emerged on Friday that Summit Materials, a US construction materials company, has made a rival bid to buy supplier Ash Grove Cement. The move has put Summit head-tohead with a $3.5bn takeover play from CRH and at the moment Summit has a decent lead with its offer coming in at between $3.7bn and $3.8bn.

Summit is a familiar adversary for CRH. Its founder is Tom Hill, the former chief of CRH’s US operations who had once been tipped for the top job at CRH. Running the US operations had been a well-trodden route to the role of chief executive of the group. But Hill left after CRH appointed its finance chief Myles Lee to the top job following a lengthy selection process. He brought a number of CRH executives with him and later went on to float Summit.

Hill has built up a business of scale and ambition and it will be fascinating to see if he continues to stonewall CRH’s latest M&A plan.