glad-handing [noun, informal] being very friendly to people you have not met before, as a way of trying to get an advantage
Boris Johnson’s government will have issued a variety of edicts calling on officials to bang the drum for Britain as we stare into the Brexit abyss. Britain’s ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein looks to have answered the call and has been pressing the flesh with European cement moguls:
Thank you to Jan Jenisch, CEO of @LafargeHolcim, for an excellent meeting today to discuss expanding business in the UK. Delighted that Britain is one of the top industrial bases for the world’s No1 building materials company. Active in the UK since 1858... pic.twitter.com/Boo1e6ye6D— Jane Owen (@JaneOwenFCO) August 20, 2019
Of course, LafargeHolcim has not been "active in the UK since 1858."
Holcim was only founded in 1912. Lafarge, founded in 1833, actually worked for the other side during WWII and "built the Atlantic wall under Petain and Hitler". The article Trump border wall shines spotlight on French-Swiss cement maker's murky past quotes Jérôme Prieur, the author of "The Atlantic Wall – A Monument to Collaboration":
Two of its factories produced cement for the Nazis: one in occupied territory, near Angoulême [in the west of France]. The other was in unoccupied territory, near Ardèche [a region in the southwest]. Paradoxically, it was the factory in the free zone [before it was invaded by Nazi forces in November 1942] that showed the most zeal for the German war effort.
The war wasn’t a down period for the company. Lafarge, which was already a major cement producer, maintained its status thanks to its economic collaboration with the Germans.
Anyway, "forgive and forget", as Basil Fawlty once famously said.
Aggregate Industries – which may indeed be able to trace its routes in the UK back to 1858 – became part of Holcim in 2005 and LafargeHolcim in 2015.
