Hanson UK put up for sale with £1bn price tag

Hanson UK is for sale and the company's heavily indebted German parent, HeidelbergCement, has an asking price of £1bn.

Heidelberg is thought to have started the rounds, looking to interest potential bidders, at the start of the month.

Commerzbank is said to have been brought in to handle the sale.

Hanson UK employs 6,500 people who work on 350 sites.

Heidelberg dived into the UK in 2007 when it bought Hanson for close on £8bn.

That ambitious move has left the company with debts of more than £5bn.

Heidelberg is owned by the family of Adolf Merckle, the German billionaire who committed suicide in January. Its latest plan, announced earlier this month, included an intention to sell £1.7bn of assets to help pay back the banks.

Howard Seymour, an analyst-at broker Numis, has told the This is Money website that Hanson UK is likely to be broken up in order to achieve a sale

Hanson UK has four divisions:

aggregates and asphalt
concrete
building products
cement.

“Many of the leading construction suppliers would be unable to make an acquisition of this size,” Seymour told the website. “Several have witnessed their divisions lose value in the past year. Companies are most likely to cherry-pick assets.”

Who might dive in?

The front-runners are CRH, the Irish building materials giant, and Holcim, the Swiss worldwide supplier of cement and aggregates

Both are thought likely to take this opportunity to get their hands on parts of Hanson UK.

CRH raised £1bn through a rights issue in March and is looking to flash its chequebook.

This far, Hanson has only conceded that it is looking to sell parts of its building products division. This includes Thermalite, the aerated blocks business, which Hanson acquired in 2006 for £120m.