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A Holcim cement plant at Portland, Colorado, its kilns, storage silos and conveyors standing against a dry western landscape.

Photo: Jeffrey Beall, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

EconomyReuters · Inquirer.netAug 2, 2026

Switzerland's Holcim agrees to sell its Philippines cement business to China's Huaxin Cement for about $807 million

The Swiss building-materials group Holcim agreed to sell its Philippines operations to China's Huaxin Cement for about $807 million, the companies said, as Holcim continues to trim its global portfolio. The deal hands the state-backed Chinese producer a major foothold in Southeast Asia's construction market. Huaxin, which recently expanded in Africa, said the acquisition fit its overseas growth strategy.

Analogies

Britain buys Egypt's share of the Suez Canal (1875)

In 1875, debt-ridden Egypt was forced to sell its stake in the company that owned the newly cut Suez Canal, the great waterway carved through the desert to join two seas. Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli moved within days, borrowing millions from the Rothschilds to seize the khedive's 177,000 shares before France could. Overnight a rising imperial power became the largest single shareholder in a strategic foreign enterprise, buying its way to a foothold on the road to the East.
Wikipedia: Suez Canal Company →

Japan's Mitsubishi buys into Rockefeller Center (1989)

At the height of Japan's 1980s boom, Mitsubishi Estate paid hundreds of millions of dollars for a controlling share of the Rockefeller Group, owner of Manhattan's most storied cluster of skyscrapers. To many Americans it looked like a rising economic power buying up the very landmarks of another nation's ambition. The trophy soon soured: within a few years the property slid into bankruptcy and the Japanese owners walked away.
Wikipedia: Rockefeller Center →

The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:3-4, KJV)

3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. 4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
The Holy Bible, King James Version, Genesis 11:3-4 (Christian Classics Ethereal Library) →

Except the Lord build the house (Psalm 127:1, KJV)

Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.
The Holy Bible, King James Version, Psalm 127:1 (Christian Classics Ethereal Library) →
Pieter Bruegel the Elder's 1563 painting of the Tower of Babel: a vast, half-finished spiral tower under construction, rising through the clouds above a Flemish port city.

The Tower of Babel - Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563)

The paintings depict the construction of the Tower of Babel, which, according to the Book of Genesis in the Bible, was built by a unified, monolingual humanity as a mark of their achievement and to prevent their dispersion
Wikipedia: The Tower of Babel (Bruegel) →
Canaletto's mid-1720s painting of a Venetian campo turned into a working stonemasons' yard, with rough blocks of stone and labourers at work beside the Grand Canal.

The Stonemason's Yard - Canaletto (c. 1725)

Several masons are at work shaping and carving stone probably destined for the reconstruction of the nearby church of San Vidal
Wikipedia: The Stonemason's Yard →