Lakshmi Mittal buys Lafarge, AA assets
its debt.
She added that with this deal, Lafarge had raised nearly 650 million euros from asset sales this year against a target of at least 1 billion euros.
The French company has been shedding non-core assets and refocusing on its cement and concrete business after the debt it racked up to acquire Middle Eastern cement maker Orascom in 2007 led to the loss of its investment-grade credit rating last year.
Britain's Competition Commission began looking into the proposed venture, which would have rung up annual sales worth 1.8 billion pounds ($2.9 billion) in 2010, after the tie-up was challenged by the country's consumer affairs watchdog, the Office of Fair Trading, in September last year.
Lafarge's Hope cement plant in northern England is one of the largest in Britain, and regulators hoped its sale will bring in a new player to maintain the current level of competition. The UK cement market is dominated by Lafarge, Tarmac, Cemex and HeidelbergCement's Hanson.
Lafarge shares were up 0.2 percent at 45.72 euros on the CAC40 index in early trade, while Anglo American was trading 0.3 percent higher at 1,695 pence on London's FTSE100 index. ArcelorMittal shares were 0.1 percent higher.
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