When CRH finance director Myles Lee said at the end of August that the construction materials giant could still fund short-term acquisition activity to the tune of 4bn, the consensus was that adverse conditions in the credit markets would keep it to smallish deals like Cementbouw, the Dutch cement supplier it bought out that month for 184m.

But CRH evidently isn't feeling much distress.

It jumped on the Cemex opportunity only days after spending 260m on four US materials firms.

The company has now said it has other means to increase borrowing flexibility, even though buying is approaching the 4bn limit informally voiced by management around the time of its interim results late last month, when it postponed a 1bn bond issue intended to pay down some of the company's 5.45bn in existing debt.

But because the Cemex commitment . . . if the deal goes through . . . would be so significant, any other purchases would be traditional bolt-on buys of much smaller scale.

The marketing roadshow for the bond had been completed and had a good response, according to the company, but management decided not to close the issue . . . choosing instead to revisit the subject after September.

A spokesman said last week that Cemex was dominating the company's attention and no decision had been made on the bond issue.

Even without the bond, analysts considered CRH's balance sheet sufficiently robust to accommodate the massive Cemex deal, which is still in discussions.

The company's earnings are running at just over 9 times its debt interest payments.