F&C’s Bramson lines up target with new fund
Edward Bramson, the activist investor who is executive chairman of F&C Asset Management, is preparing to take on another midsized UK public company. He has launched a second Guernsey vehicle,…
Clariant units sale set to raise SFr502m
Clariant, the Swiss speciality chemicals group, is to sell three of its units to the US-based private equity group, SK Capital, for SFr502m ($551m) as it presses ahead with plans…
Europe told it risks missing shale boom
©Gabriel Szabo/Guzelian Europe risks losing new petrochemical investments to the US and other countries because of its reluctance to embrace shale gas, the head of the industry’s biggest company has…
US shale gas sparks a chemical revolution
The international chemicals industry is undergoing its most profound upheaval for 75 years, according to Kevin Swift of the American Chemistry Council. Not since the years before the second world…
Akzo Nobel – paint job
Talk about a man in a hurry. Ton Büchner became chief executive of Akzo Nobel in April. Since then he has replaced the heads of two of the Dutch chemicals…
Akzo Nobel sells paints unit for $1.05bn
Shares in Akzo Nobel jumped more than 5 per cent after the Dutch coatings and chemicals group announced it was selling its North American paints business to rival PPG for…
Syngenta nurtures seed-to-harvest model
The name may trip off the tongue a little less easily, but Switzerland-based Syngenta is the Apple of the agrochemical world. By selling seeds, pesticides, fertilisers and advisory services it…
Brazil agriculture swaps to bartering
Suppliers to the agricultural industry are conducting up to 40 per cent of their business by old-fashioned barter in Brazil and eyeing plans to take the system to Russia and…
Yara to buy fertiliser assets in Brazil
Yara International has struck a deal to buy Bunge’s fertiliser assets in Brazil for $750m as the Norwegian group fights for a bigger share of one of Latin America’s most…
Cookson demerger to lure potential buyers
The looming demerger of Cookson Group is poised to attract bidders for the two newly created FTSE 250 companies, in a move that observers hope could spark a recovery in…
Cookson name to die in split
Shareholders in Cookson have overwhelmingly approved the engineering group’s proposal to split itself into two separate companies, in a move that will spell the end of the group’s 300-year-old name.…
Platinum price fall hits Johnson Matthey
Shares in Johnson Matthey lost their lustre on Wednesday after the platinum and specialty chemicals producer reported a fall in interim revenues and offered little hope of respite for the…
Carclo pins hopes on second half
Plastics maker Carclo has pinned its hopes on a stronger second half, after delays to payments and the sale of its automotive communications business weighed on first-half sales. The group…
China offers a taste of R&D to come
Fancy some purple sweet potato oatmeal or hot-and-sour-fish-soup-flavoured potato crisps? For multinational companies such as PepsiCo, which on Tuesday opened its largest research and development centre outside the US in…
Sherwin-Williams buys Mexican paint maker
Sherwin-Williams, the US paint manufacturer, on Monday announced that it had agreed to buy Mexico’s largest paint producer in a deal worth about $2.4bn, including debt. The all-cash purchase of…