Lafarge boss Bruno Lafont had to be removed as chief executive-elect of a merged Lafarge-Holcim cement group because of the “value drift” that occurred after the tie-up was announced last April, Holcim’s chief executive said.

In an interview with France's Journal du Dimanche, Bernard Fontana, chief executive of the Swiss side of the proposed Franco-Swiss partnership, said last week's decision to change the management structure as well as the one-for-one share exchange ratio was not about style and national differences but about performance.

“I am French and a polytechnician,” he said in a reference to the elite French school that educates top French executives.

“So I am the proof that Holcim can be run despite the cultural differences between a Swiss and a French management style . . . But when a value drifts, that raises a governance problem.”

CRH has agreed to buy €6.5 billion worth of their assets, which would give antitrust clearance for the Holcim-Lafarge deal. The Irish group’s shares rose 5.1 per cent on Friday after the removal of Mr Lafont helped salvage the planned multibillion-euro merger to create the world’s biggest cement group.

– Reuters