Stockholders in Cemex, the world's No. 3 cement maker, are likely to approve a $2 billion share issue on Thursday even though it will dilute their investments as the company pushes to pay debt and avoid fines. [nN24181768]
Here are some facts about Cemex and its CEO.
* Operating in more than 50 countries, Cemex has an annual production capacity of close to 97 million metric tonnes of cement and $44 billion in assets. But the global economic crisis slashed Cemex's net sales to $14.5 billion in 2009, down from $20.1 billion in 2008, the latest data available.
* Monterrey-based Cemex opened its first plant in a poor northern Mexican town in 1906, and for decades was a small cement maker. In the mid-1980s, Chief Executive Lorenzo Zambrano, who Cemex employees refer to as "The Engineer," took over the company with $300 million in annual revenue.
* Under Zambrano, whose grandfather helped found the company a century ago, Cemex has bought more than 20 companies, building a business empire over the past two decades that stretches across the globe.
* Zambrano, a Stanford University graduate, is credited with being one of the first businessmen in Latin America to foresee globalization. He usedMexico's falling trade barriers to enact his philosophy of "buy or be bought."
* But Cemex's purchase of Australian cement company Rinker in July 2007 for $16 billion, nearly proved to be a step too far, pushing the company perilously close to default. One of the biggest-ever purchases by an emerging markets company, Cemex bought Rinker with bank debt just as the U.S. housing market crisis broke.
* Cemex won a reprieve in August 2009 after it convinced bankers to refinance $15 billion in debt until February 2014. But the long-awaited recovery in European and U.S. cement volumes is still illusive and Cemex has been forced to constantly juggle its debt to avoid a payment crunch.
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