...October 21, 2022 LONDON (S&P Global Ratings) Oct. 21, 2022--S&P Global Ratings said today that its view of Switzerland-headquartered Holcim Ltd.'s (###+/Stable/A-2) creditworthiness is unchanged after its subsidiary Lafarge S.A. reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) to pay a $778 million financial penalty and plead guilty to one count of conspiring to provide material support to designated foreign terrorist organizations in Syria during the country's civil war. The plea agreement concludes the DoJ investigation but separate criminal proceedings in France are still pending against Lafarge. Our ratings on Holcim are unaffected by the DOJ plea agreement. This is because, in our view, the company has sufficient balance sheet strength to absorb the financial impact of the penalty while retaining comfortable rating headroom, and we already factored the impact of the DOJ litigation from a management and governance perspective into our ratings. Furthermore, we understand...
