Hanson, the last of Britain’s big building materials makers, is to fall into German hands in an £8 billion cash sale.

The takeover of Hanson by HeidelbergCement, Germany’s biggest cement maker and the world’s fourth-largest, means that virtually all the main structural components needed to build a typical British home will come from foreign-owned companies.

Hanson’s agreement yesterday to an £11-per-share offer from HeidelbergCement comes after a wave of European acquisitions of British building materials companies over the past ten years.

Berndt Scheifele, the chief executive of HeidelbergCement and the prospective boss of Hanson, said: “All nations concentrate on what they are best at. We have less financial services but are driven by products and engineering. The key issue is also ownership in Germany – our unique selling point is that we still have the strong family-owned companies that are well known and I would say the best managed.”

HeidelbergCement is more than 80 per cent owned by the Merckle family, whose septuagenarian patriarch, Adolf, sits on the company’s supervisory board.

To ward off potential rivals, the German-owned company bought a 10 per cent share in Hanson in the open market yesterday, before its takeover formally goes through.

Alan Murray, Hanson’s chief executive, said: “I would have been happy to grow the company, but this is something we had to put to shareholders and we need to stay focused on value.

“We have done our best for shareholders and this is good for employees. Lord Hanson’s focus was shareholder value and I learnt from him.”

The merger will lead to job losses, but these will be mainly among administrative staff in the United States. About €200 million (£137 million) of annual savings should be created. British jobs should be safeguarded, Dr Scheifele said.

However, yesterday’s recommendation of a sale by Hanson has already prompted one large institutional shareholder to ask whether the company had extracted a full enough price.

“This is about assets in the ground which are irreplaceable . . . Is there a bit of unseemly haste about all this?” the investor asked.

Hanson demerged into four businesses in 1997, the year in which the overseas assault on big British building materials manufacturers started in earnest, with Lafarge, of France, taking over of Redland, the UK roofing business. Consolidation in the cement industry picked up in 2005, when RMC, of Britain, was snapped up by Cemex, of Mexico. The year, Holcim, of Switzerland, paid £2.2 billion for Aggregate Industries.

When Cemex struck again last autumn, this time buying Rinker, the Australian-owned cement maker, Dr Scheifele started to plan its move to buy Hanson.

Hanson’s shares have risen from about 250p shortly after Mr Murray took over as chief executive in 2002. The HeidelbergCement offer is a 50 per cent premium to Hanson’s average share price over the past 12 months. Rothschild advised Hanson. Deutsche Bank advised HeidelbergCement.

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