CRH

2011–2019: Americas, Europe and emerging markets

CRH confirmed in 2013 that it was interested in looking at other opportunities in India. In February 2015, the company acquired assets worth US$6.5 billion from LafargeHolcim, becoming the world's third-largest building materials group by market value. This acquisition almost tripled CRH's net debt, bringing it to €6.6 billion. In August 2015, CRH paid $1.3 billion for CR Laurence, a glazing company based in California. The acquisition complemented CRH's existing North American Building Envelope division, which employed 4,500 people at the time. By November 2015, CRH was getting about a fifth of its operating earnings from US infrastructure.

As of November 2016, half the asphalt, aggregates and assorted material it sold went to the United States. At that time, CRH was the biggest producer of asphalt in the US and the third largest producer of ready-mixed concrete according to the Financial Times.

As of 27 April 2017, CRH was Ireland's biggest company.

Over the earlier part of 2018, CRH spent €500 million on eight acquisitions. Also in 2017, CRH sold Allied Building Products to Beacon Roofing Supply for $2.6 billion. By the end of 2017, the biggest acquisition was Fels-Werke GmbH, a German leading lime and aggregates business with 1 billion tonnes of high-quality limestone reserves, 11 production locations, nine in Germany and one in both the Czech Republic and Russia.

In 2018, CRH purchased Ash Grove Cement Company, and in July 2019, CRH sold its underperforming European distribution arm to The Blackstone Group for €1.64 billion.

2020s

In 2021, CRH invested $1.5 billion in twenty acquisitions, including Angel Brother Enterprises, a Texas-based asphalt paving and infrastructure company, and National Pipe & Plastics Inc., a New York-based manufacturer of water infrastructure and electrical conduit products.

In February 2022, CRH sold its Building Envelope business to KPS Capital Partners for $3.8 billion. In June, the company acquired Barette Outdoor Living, an Ohio-based manufacturer with ten U.S. facilities, from TorQuest Partners and Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec for $1.9 billion.

Following a shareholder vote in June 2023, CRH transferred its primary stock listing from the London Stock Exchange to the New York Stock Exchange. In August 2023, the company expanded its Texas operations through the acquisition of cement and concrete assets from Martin Marietta Materials, Inc. The purchase included the Hunter Cement Plant, with a 2.1 million ton annual capacity, serving Austin and San Antonio markets, multiple terminals along Texas's eastern gulf coast, and twenty ready-mixed concrete plants.

In December 2023, CRH established a venture capital division, CRH Ventures, with a US$250 million fund. This unit focuses on investments in construction and climate technology companies.

In June 2012, TD Shane Ross urged an investigation into the company.

In February 2020, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission closed its investigation into purchasing arrangements in the bagged cement sector and took no action due to lack of evidence.

United States

In 2006, in the case of Jensen Enterprises Inc. v. Oldcastle Precast, Inc., et al., an antitrust lawsuit was filed in California against CRH subsidiary Oldcastle Precast and three affiliates of AT&T. The defendants were alleged to have unreasonably restrained trade and conspired to monopolize telephone vaults for land-line connections. Plaintiffs challenged a contract requiring developers to purchase Oldcastle Precast product for properties served by AT&T infrastructure. They contended the arrangement led to Oldcastle Precast capturing northern California sales of precast electrical vaults, which were often placed concurrently with telephone structures. In 2010, an American Court of Appeal ruled that the plaintiff's counsel had failed to provide enough evidence to show that the defendants harmed competition in California and Nevada telephone vault markets.

In October 2009, a cement and concrete price fixing class action lawsuit was filed in Florida against Oldcastle Materials and others. The claim alleged that the defendants eliminated competition in the market for cement and concrete by charging artificially high prices from at least the period 2000 to 2009. The claim further alleged that the conspiracy was facilitated through in-personal meetings, telephone conversations and other communications. In 2008, the defendants announced uniform price increases for concrete and cement, bringing their prices to the same level at the same time, the lawsuit claimed. Then, in September, the defendants cut the price of concrete in an effort to lure customers away from independently owned concrete firms. The lawsuit stated that the practices alleged in the cement and concrete industry were clearly illegal. In 2012, the case was settled for undisclosed terms.

In April 2014, an Oldcastle Materials construction zone in Cleveland, Ohio was described as "ridiculously dangerous" in a lawsuit concerning the death of Randy Roginski on 27 July 2010. His family was awarded $19 million compensation and the CRH-related Shelly Company was fined $20 million in punitive damages.

In 2017, CRH was accused of exercising significant market power in West Virginia through a series of acquisitions and anticompetitive actions that increased prices for state road paving contracts in the three markets in the state between 2010 and 2014. Under a settlement reached in October 2020, CRH subsidiaries West Virginia Paving, Kelly Paving and American Asphalt made a combined, upfront payment of $30.35 million to governments and West Virginia Paving agreed to provide the state an additional $71 million in credits that can be applied to already completed, yet unpaid, road projects and future work over the following seven years.

Poland

In 2005, a Polish businessman, Marek Dochnal, alleged to a Polish Parliamentary Inquiry that he had arranged a bribe of almost $1 million for CRH to a former minister for privatisation, Wieslaw Kaczmarek, in connection with the privatisation of a cement plant at Ozarow, in central Poland, in 1995. CRH, which now owns and operates the cement plant at Ozarow, said the allegations were "without foundation".

It was also revealed in June 2005 that CRH contributed €125,000 to a charity founded by the wife of Poland's president, Jolanta Kwasniewska. Both CRH and the Polish first lady denied any sinister motive behind the transaction.

Ireland

In 2003, CRH was accused of making payments to Ireland's former Taoiseach Charles Haughey as details emerged of how Haughey received payments from various companies and businessmen in return for political favours. In 1969, Roadstone, later acquired by CRH, sold 80 acres of land to Haughey, the then Minister of Finance, for £120,000. In 1973, Haughey sold 17.5 acres of that land back to CRH for £140,000. Within four years, Haughey had made a net profit of £20,000 and 62.5 acres at CRH's expense.

Charles Haughey was offered chairmanship of CRH in 1972.

Ansbacher Bank

The existence of illegal offshore accounts first emerged in 1997 during the McCracken Tribunal set up to investigate reports of secret payments to former Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Charles Haughey and former cabinet minister Michael Lowry.

The bank was founded in the 1970s and was being run by Des Traynor who was chairman of CRH from 1989 to 1994 and who ran his bank during that period out of CRH's registered office in Dublin's Fitzwilliam Square where the company provided an office for its chairman. Traynor was also personal financier to Charles Haughey.

During the investigation it materialised that Justice Moriarty held approximately £500,000 in CRH shares and while that in his opinion precluded him from investigating certain matters concerning CRH he was not, he said, precluded from inquiring into banking activities conducted from Des Traynor's offices at Fitzwilliam Square.

In 1999, as evidence on the scale of the Ansbacher accounts grew Tánaiste (Irish Deputy Prime Minister) and PD Minister Mary Harney asked the High Court to appoint inspectors who could identify the account holders.

The High Court Inspectors' report was published in June 2002. It found that eight out of fifteen CRH directors held Ansbacher accounts, including four former chairmen. It also concluded (Chapter 15, p. 189) that "CRH as a corporation cannot be said to have knowingly assisted in the carrying out of Ansbacher’s activities in Ireland".

After the publication of the report CRH acknowledged publicly that its then Chairman had "misused its facilities and personnel" which "represented a grave breach of trust by Mr Traynor".

Sale of Glen Ding Lands

In 1998, Dáil Éireann (Ireland's Parliament) voted against an investigation into why an asset with the potential to produce a yield of £48 million in terms of sand and gravel reserves was sold to Roadstone, a subsidiary company of CRH, without public tender for £1.25 million in 1991.

Many opposition members of parliament voiced concerns that at the time of sale, Charles Haughey was Taoiseach and his financier Des Traynor was Chairman of CRH. Dáil Éireann voted not to investigate whether CRH had donated funds to any political party or politician before or after the purchase of Glen Ding.

The State's Comptroller and Auditor General conducted an investigation into the sale and found that the competing bid fell "far short of" the Roadstone offer and that "The Department acted at all times in the best commercial interests of the State" (Section 9.6). It also noted "even though it is unlikely that the Roadstone offer would have been bettered. The attraction of concluding the sale at what was considered a good price outweighed the imperative to act evenhandedly which is a basic principle when the State is doing business". It was noted by the Department's Accounting Officer that the Roadstone offer "was more than 50% above the only alternative offer received", that another bidder "was afforded every opportunity" to make a better offer and that given subsequent delays and planning issues. "In retrospect the deal had proved to be exceptional".

The Glen Ding transaction was further investigated by the Moriarty Tribunal which in 2006 reported its conclusion "that there was no connection, directly or indirectly, between Charles Haughey and any aspect of the disposal, nor any connection between the operation of the Ansbacher accounts and any aspect of the disposal.