2015 was the year when companies and markets began to feel the impact of the Great Unwinding of stimulus policies. The blog’s readership has increased significantly as a result, as people began to abandon the consensus wisdom which had so clearly failed – once again – to provide a reliable guide to the outlook. The […]
Chemicals and the Economy
Chart of the Year – Oil prices return to natural gas linkage
Last year’s ‘Chart of the Year’ was headlined “China’s auto sales bubble begins to burst“. Few would disagree with this view today. Similarly, there is little doubt about 2015’s Chart of the Year. It has been the focus of industry and analyst attention all year: Those who believed that argument that the world faces an […]
US, Iran to sell oil in January as Libya ramps up volumes
Both the US and Iran are likely to be moving oil into world markets early in the New Year. The lifting of the US export ban has led to early announcements of oil sales: Vitol will move the first cargo via the Enterprise terminal in Houston in early January. Iran is expecting to have sanctions lifted around the same […]
$25/bbl oil – probably now only a question of “when”, not “if”
Oil prices are just $1 or so away from falling back into the $10 – $35/bbl range that has dominated most of history. Thus we are now reaching a second critical moment in oil markets since Stimulus began in 2009, as the chart shows: The first was the end of the Stimulus rally which ran […]
Brazil – still ‘The country of tomorrow?’
I am just back from Sao Paulo, Brazil, where I was giving a keynote presentation alongside Brazil’s Finance Minister and other senior figures at the 20th Annual Meeting of the Brazilian chemical industry association, ABIQUIM. As we all know, Brazil is facing difficult times. I lost count of the number of times the word “crisis” […]
The unseen costs of a Dow-DuPont merger
The unseen costs of the proposed Dow-DuPont merger are certain to be much larger than those we can currently describe. Both companies will effectively be more reactive to external developments, rather than pro-active, due to the internal focus that will be required to develop and implement the merger and divestment processes. This cost could well […]
5 questions for the Dow-DuPont merger
All the evidence suggests that most mergers fail to deliver the promised value. So those who propose them, especially when they involve such critical companies for the US and global economy as Dow Chemical and DuPont, must expect some hard questions to be asked. Here are my 5 top questions in logical order – Why?, […]
Plastics lose market share to lightweight steel in US sutos
Plastics consumption in US autos is going down, not up. Steelmakers and glass manufacturers have recaptured ground lost in the years to 2009, and are capturing new sales as auto standards demand lighter-weight cars. And yet, if you had asked polymer suppliers about future demand in the US auto market a few years ago, they […]
Xi in Paris: all part of China’s New Normal
President Xi’s presence at the Climate Change conference highlights the far-reaching changes set out in China’s new 5 Year Plan, as I describe in my latest post for the Financial Times, published on the BeyondBrics blog How times change. President Xi Jinping has just become the first Chinese president to attend a climate change conference. His presence in Paris […]
ECB President has New York temper tantrum as Board blocks major new stimulus
“There is no doubt that if we had to intensify the use of our instruments to ensure we achieve our price stability mandate, then we would.” (Mario Draghi, New York, Friday) Pity poor Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank (ECB). He is used to the adulation of markets – and adores his nickname […]
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