Live news: Adani buys Holcim’s Indian businesses for $10.5bn

Asia’s richest man Gautam Adani has struck a deal with Swiss cement giant Holcim to acquire its Indian businesses for $10.5bn in cash, his biggest acquisition to date.

The Adani Group, a coal-to-ports conglomerate, will acquire Holcim’s controlling 63.2 per cent stake Ambuja Cements and its 54.5 per cent stake in ACC. Holcim said the offer valued Ambuja Cement at Rs385-a-share and ACC at Rs2,300.

If the deal is approved by regulators, it will vault the Adani Group from having almost no presence to the second biggest player in the world’s second largest cement market. Adani Group will also take on Ambuja and ACC’s 10,700 employees.

Group chair Gautam Adani said the acquisition would deliver significant capacity expansion, and that the group’s renewable energy footprint would give it a “head start in the decarbonisation journey that is a must for cement production”.

Adani Green Energy, one of the group’s listed entities, is among India’s biggest renewable power companies by market capitalisation.

Adani’s bid beat a $7bn equity offer by JSW Group.

The deal comes as India’s government looks to boost infrastructure investment to help retain the country’s place as the world’s fastest-growing large economy.

“Our move into the cement business is yet another validation of our belief in our nation’s growth story,” Adani said.

Read more on the deal here.

Boris Johnson is this week expected to sign off plans for a law to unilaterally scrap parts of the UK’s Brexit deal, in spite of warnings it could collapse talks with Brussels and spark a trade war with the EU.

The prime minister’s allies tried on Sunday to calm tensions, insisting the plan to rewrite parts of the Northern Ireland protocol was only “an insurance policy” in case talks with the EU on improving its operation failed.

But Simon Coveney, Ireland’s foreign minister, told Sky News: “There’s no way the EU can compromise if the UK is threatening unilateral action to pass domestic legislation to set aside international obligations.”

Ministers are expected to meet as early as Tuesday to agree the plan, in spite of fears in the Treasury that it could ultimately lead to EU trade retaliation and worsen the cost of living crisis.

Government officials said Steve Barclay, cabinet office minister and an ally of chancellor Rishi Sunak, had asked the Treasury to produce work on the likely economic impact of a trade war with the EU.

Johnson, writing in the Belfast Telegraph, said if the EU did not soften its stance on the protocol there would be “a necessity to act” and that he would set out “next steps to parliament in the coming days”.

Under the Brexit deal, Northern Ireland institutions have to approve the continuation of the trading arrangements in the protocol in a “consent vote” in 2024.

Read more on plans here.

Sweden will jettison 200 years of military non-alignment and apply to join Nato alongside its neighbour Finland, a move that would change the geopolitics of Europe and underscore the unintended consequences of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

In a momentous day for the Nordic nations, Finland said on Sunday that it would formally apply for Nato membership in the coming days, while the ruling Social Democrats in Sweden broke with tradition and said they would follow suit.

“Europe, Sweden and the Swedish public are living a new and dangerous reality. The European security order that Sweden builds its security on is under attack,” said Magdalena Andersson, Sweden’s prime minister and Social Democrat leader. “We Social Democrats think that the best thing for Sweden’s security is that we join Nato.”

Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, another non-Nato member that shares a border with Russia, has upturned decades of security thinking in the two Nordic countries. Finnish president Sauli Niinistö called it a “historic day”, saying “a new era is opening”.

Sweden’s Social Democrats said they would in the application express reservations against the deployment of nuclear weapons and foreign bases on their soil. Finland said it would not impose any conditions.

Finnish and Swedish membership of Nato would be one of the most important and far-reaching consequences of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, with public opinion in both countries swinging massively in favour of such a move since February.

Read more on the applications here.