Vulcan Materials Co. has announced it has completed the divestitures required pursuant to a consent decree that was a condition of the Department of Justice’s clearance for Vulcan’s acquisition of Florida Rock Industries, which closed on Nov. 16, 2007. The divestitures were completed in a series of three independent transactions that involved both cash and the tax-deferred exchange of strategic assets.

Vulcan sold four quarries and a greenfield site in Georgia and a quarry in Tennessee to Martin Marietta Materials. In return, Vulcan received cash, a quarry near Sacramento, Calif., real property with proven and permitted reserves adjacent to a Vulcan quarry in San Antonio, and fee ownership of property at a Vulcan quarry in North Carolina that Vulcan had leased from Martin Marietta. With the Luck Stone Corp., Vulcan exchanged a former Florida Rock quarry and a sales yard in Virginia for cash and Luck Stone quarries in Elkton and Augusta, Va., In a third transaction, Vulcan sold its interests in a quarry in Georgia to The Concrete Company, which had been the joint venture partner with Florida Rock in this operation. The cash portions of these transactions totaled $214 million subject to certain additional postclosing cash adjustments relating to inventories and escrows. Two of the divested sites were owned by Vulcan prior to its acquisition of Florida Rock. Accordingly, Vulcan realized an aftertax gain on the sale of these assets of approximately $0.41 per diluted share, which will be recorded in the second quarter of 2008. Vulcan previously anticipated that this gain would be realized in the first quarter.