InterviewGerman ICIG to make more chem deals

31 January 2008 23:30  [Source: ICIS news]

NEW ORLEANS (ICIS news)--German private-investment firm International Chemical Investors Group (ICIG) plans to make more chemical acquisitions - on top of the 14 deals it has made since 2004, an executive said on Thursday.

“We have a busy pipeline,” said Achim Riemann, ICIG managing director. Riemann made his comments at the Informex USA trade show in New Orleans.

In particular, ICIG plans to pursue complementary technologies that the investment group does not already possess, he said.

“You need to look at what the market is requiring in technologies, what is coming up and what fits our capability profile,” he said. “So we would not go into biologics because we have no experience [there], but everything that would help get us competitive in the small-molecule business, be it agro or pharma, that’s something we would look at.”

Fine chemical businesses - Corden, Weylchem, PPC, Synthacon and Miltitz Aroma Chemicals - account for about half of ICIG’s sales.

The other four businesses - Carbotech, Enka, Nease and Ruetgers Organics - are in various specialty markets.

ICIG is not a short-term investor, building the group in order to cash out, Riemann said.

“We are a strategic investor which has a financial-investor attitude. We are financed with private money, so there is no fund, no need to exit because we have to close the fund and pay the money back to the investors,” he said.

“But we believe in some mechanisms private equity uses, and those we apply to what we do," Riemann said. "We see ourselves as portfolio managers or portfolio builders in the chemical industry.”

ICIG will expand and grow the group through additional acquisitions as they come along, he said. “Where will this end up? I think the sky’s the limit.”

By: Clay Boswell
+1 713 525 2653

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