‘It is a process’: CRH CEO Jim Mintern on leaving London for New York

It has been two years since CRH, the Dublin-headquartered building materials group, moved its primary stock market listing from London to New York. Jim Mintern, its CEO since January, says as many as 10 other London-listed companies have called him in the past nine months alone to ask how it’s done.

The City’s concerns about an exodus from the London market grew this week as AstraZeneca, its most valuable company, said it would swap its American depositary receipts for a direct listing of its shares in New York — a possible prelude to switching its primary listing. The drugmaker’s announcement came alongside news that London had fallen out of the top 20 markets for new listings, behind Mexico.

London Stock Exchange Group CEO David Schwimmer told Semafor earlier this year that most companies that have relocated have seen “gruesome” returns. That has not been CRH’s experience — its stock is up more than 130% since it announced the planned move, twice the growth in the S&P 500. That’s even before CRH’s expected admission into that index, which it hopes will boost its valuation further from the current $80 billion.

Mintern, the former CRH CFO whose predecessor, Albert Manifold, took over as chair of London-listed BP this week, marked the anniversary with an investor day at which he pledged annual revenue growth of 7% to 9% over the next five years. His pitch is that CRH, which employs some 80,000 people, is well-placed to benefit from a surge of investment in US infrastructure, from roads and bridges to AI data centers and microchip plants.

In an interview, Mintern outlined to Semafor the complex “plumbing” behind CRH’s move, what had been most critical to diving into New York’s deeper pool of capital, and the unforeseen reluctance of European analysts to give up coverage to their US colleagues.

“It’s tempting to think about this all happening on one day, and then you just get on with a new life,” he says of the move. “It is a process; it wasn’t an event. Two years later, it’s still a living process.”

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson: When did you start exploring a relisting?

Jim Mintern: It was the week before Christmas 2022, and we stood up teams between Christmas and the New Year, just to consider it. Nearly 80% of our profits were coming out of the US. The [Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act] had just come in [in November 2021]. And we felt for many reasons, [including] the potential to issue stock for people selling their businesses in the US, and attracting and retaining talent, a US listing was essential.

We worked on it intensively from late December into January. We have a board meeting the second week of February; we were ready to go to the board with a recommendation that this could be done.

The process took about nine months. What mattered most in getting it done at that speed?

Getting the right internal team with a very high level of competency was essential to it. We also had a longstanding relationship with our financial advisors. And then myself and Albert blocked almost two full weeks out of our lives and met as many of the shareholders as we could and stepped them through the logic of what we were doing. It was like a full year set of results, the preparation, the scripting, the Q&A sessions. It was very intensive to get that right.

We had already migrated to US dollar reporting, and we had an ADR listing in the US, which helped, and we were [Sarbanes-Oxley Act] compliant. Most of our management team were already based in the US at that time, and we had moved the investor relations team over here as well. When I look at other companies doing it now, I think that certainly is something you need to think about.

And what were the hurdles?

In simple terms, the plumbing in the background was extremely complex to get done. Moving to quarterly reporting, and US GAAP reporting, we had to hire a lot of resources, both in the US and in Dublin, to make sure that we weren’t going to miss a beat.

How much internal uncertainty were you dealing with as well, from people asking, ‘What does this mean for my job?’

We were the largest company on the Irish stock exchange for a while. But we were always very clear that we were not moving our headquarters and we were not changing our domicile, for fiscal reasons. A lot of US companies invert back into Ireland. We were already there, so there was no need to do that. That was a very important communication internally to the team. There’s also five decades of experience in that head office in Dublin. And that kind of knowledge, which gets passed down and permeates down through the generations, would be very difficult to replicate quickly.

No jobs have disappeared at all. I’d say it’s the opposite, because moving to quarterly [reporting] and US GAAP has required additional resources, both in New York and in Dublin. It’s probably in the order of maybe 30 additional employees, that’s the cost of the move.

How do you measure the impact of the relisting?

Clearly, in terms of shareholder value creation, it’s been very significant. What surprised me was the speed of migration to the New York Stock Exchange. We still have a secondary listing in London. Before the listing, 23% of our shareholders were US; it’s now well over 60%, and that’s before we get in the S&P. Today, 96% of our daily volume trades in New York, only 4% trades in London. And the daily turnover in the stock has gone up fourfold, which just reflects the depth of the capital pool in New York. Pre-move, there was some trading here for the ADRs, but it was minute.

And has it attracted a wider investor base?

It has. It is a process; it wasn’t an event. Two years later, it’s still a living process. It’s tempting to think about this all happening on one day, and then you just get on with a new life. But it’s still live today. When we were a UK-listed company, we had 26 analysts covering us that were all European, and the challenge of getting the European analysts to give up coverage and transfer to their US colleagues is ongoing. They don’t want to give up CRH because it matters to them in London. But we’re a US-listed company, US prospective shareholders want to read the CRH research note from the analysts they’re familiar with. So getting the large investment banks to migrate their coverage from London to the US — if you ask me one thing I underestimated, that was it. It makes sense for the bank, it makes sense for us, but getting it done takes time. The analysts in Europe are very good, but they don’t serve us, honestly.