EVEN though the representative offices of Semen Gresik and Semen Padang are side by side on the twelfth floor of the Gedung Graha Irama office building in Jakarta, the two neighbors have never reconciled. But in these two office suites, the holding company and the subsidiary have both been devising strategies to win a bitter struggle that has been going on now for some two years.

It was there, on Thursday of last week, that Ikhdan Nizar, the manag