CRH apologises to shareholders hit by dividend issues since US move

• Published date: 25 April 2024
• Author: Joe Brennan
• Publication title: Irish Times: Web Edition Articles (Dublin, Ireland)

It resulted in a "small number" of investors being affected by US tax deductions on dividends and receipt of payments in dollars

Group chairman Richie Boucher said the building materials giant was aware of "issues and frustration" felt by certain shareholders. He said CRH has had "an extremely active engagement" with its US share registrar, Computershare, and that it continues to challenge the firm to resolve issues for affected investors.

"We are very disappointed to hear your frustration. We are very sorry this has happened," Mr Boucher, a former chief executive of Bank of Ireland, told one of a number of small investors who vented their disappointment at the agm.

Computershare said in December, when the issue emerged with the first dividend payment after CRH transferred its main listing to New York in September, that some of the issues resulted from "errors" in paperwork of shareholders. However, it conceded that in other cases "an administrative error" had occurred when tax was incorrectly deducted.

Speaking after the agm, CRH chief executive Albert Manifold said that for the "vast majority of shareholders everything went through smoothly".

"Regrettably there were a small number of shareholders who had difficulties and problems and, as the chairman said, we're sorry about that," he said. "We've tried to put in place over the last number of weeks or months support to help those people, both in our corporate office here in Dublin and also with Computershare. We are working through it as best we can to resolve the issues."

CRH decided last year to move its main stock market quotation from London to Wall Street and drop its Irish listing as the company seeks to position itself to secure more large infrastructure investment projects in the US, by far its largest market, and join key US equity indices. The S&P 500 index is the most widely followed index by investors globally and is being actively targeted by CRH.

"We would hope over the next 12 to 18 months...