Lafarge-Holcim urged to pick chief with power to unify factions

Lafarge-Holcim needs a chief executive with international experience to lead the combined cement group and they must not come from a purely French or Swiss background, Lafarge's largest shareholder has urged.

Speaking for the first time since the €41bn deal was brought back from the brink of disaster two weeks ago, Gerard Lamarche, who is joint managing director of Groupe Bruxelles Lambert, said the new leader will have to forge a "new culture".

"The new chief executive will have to unify, integrate and organise the two groups as well as create a new culture. So it should be someone with different experience and with an international profile," he said.

Cultural differences between France's Lafarge and Swiss cement rival Holcim were partly blamed for the bitter conflict that developed between Lafarge chief executive Bruno Lafont and the Holcim team over the past year.

The tensions eventually led to a campaign by Holcim to remove Mr Lafont from the top operational role two weeks ago. Holcim won the battle and also renegotiated the financial terms of the deal in their favour.

Two candidates thought to be in the running to be chief executive are Thomas Farrell, Lafarge's executive vice-president of operations who is American, and Eric Olsen, the Franco-American national who has the same title.

Guillaume Roux, vice-president of operations, also has French and American citizenship and is another contender. Jean-Jacques Gauthier, chief financial officer has a more French background, although he did spend time in the US and is a German speaker.

Mr Lamarche, whose GBL group owns 21 per cent of Lafarge, said the decision would be made in the coming weeks and praised the role of Mr Lafont.

"For over a year Bruno has been one of the main architects of this merger . . . He had a major part in what has been done," he said. "He will have a key role to play in what is left to do."

Mr Lamarche said that Mr Lafont had managed to get antitrust clearance for the merger quicker than many analysts had anticipated and led the sale of €6.5bn of assets to Irish group CRH. Both were major hurdles to the deal progressing.

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Mr Lafont will be co-chairman of the new group along with Wolfgang Reitzle, Holcim's chairman, and the two companies will have an equal number of board seats.

"It is always possible on one side or the other to say that there is not enough of this or not enough of the other," said Mr Lamarche.

"The truth is that what the new group has to offer its future stakeholders is considerable value creation," he said, adding that returning cash to shareholders would be a key goal of the new group.

One of the final difficulties ahead of the Holcim shareholder meeting to discuss the deal on May 7 - where it will require two-thirds of shareholder votes to secure approval - is the continued opposition of Russia's Eurocement, which owns 10.6 per cent of Holcim.

Mr Lamarche said he supported the proposition by Mr Reitzle this week of giving a board seat to Eurocement, although he said that there should be no other concessions to the dissenting group in terms of more money or shares.

"I think there is nothing else to discuss. Eurocement is a shareholder like all the other ones," he said. "But it is normal that with 5 to 6 per cent of the [new] company he is welcome to the board."

But he added: "We do not know if Eurocement wants to be on the board. [Being] on the board means you are a long-term investor, and that is not yet confirmed."

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