Entries from Chemicals & The Economy tagged with 'Dow Chemical'
Companies remain cautious on the outlook
The good news is that the stabilisation seen in Q2 has been maintained. But companies remain cautious on the outlook, to judge from Q3 reports. CEOs are sceptical about the impact of government stimulus efforts in the West, and fear...
The banks' plumbing systems appear to be blocked
The blog's favourite financial journalist, Gillian Tett, has written an excellent article summarising the similarities between today's problems in the western banking system, and those of Japan's during the 'lost decade' of the 1990's. Her point is that although central...
Dow aligns US ethylene balances
Capacity closures are always hard to achieve in the petchem industry: • First, these are a 'zero sum game' - if I shut my plant, then other producers gain in terms of overall operating rates and margins, at my expense...
Boom/Gloom Index rally continues
Last month, the blog introduced its new Boom/Gloom Index, designed to track sentiment in financial markets. The chart above now updates it to reflect the whole of June. The Index has continued to move up, and is close to the...
Ineos talks of PetroChina deal for Grangemouth
The 'Falkirk Herald', based close to Ineos's Grangemouth facility in Scotland, is not normally the place that the blog would look for news of the potential sale of a major part of the world's 4th largest chemical company. However, that...
Dow, Ineos, focus on debt issues
Dow and Ineos are two of the world's largest chemical companies. Both found themselves in tight financial situations at the start of the year. Dow's debt rating was cut to just above junk, whilst Ineos had to ask for covenant...
Dow's Morton sale shows it can still negotiate
The blog still finds it hard to adjust to Dow Chemical's current financial status, following the K-Dow/Rohm & Haas episode. But facts speak for themselves. Earlier this week, S&P lowered Dow's debt rating to just above junk grade, on completion...
Dow pays $78.97/share for Rohm & Haas
The blog has always had enormous respect for Dow. This was due to their ability to manage unconventional risks, in a way that other chemical companies (such as the blog's former employer, ICI), found impossible. Even when things went wrong,...
Arise, Sir Evil?
Apparently its not just Jim Cramer who is less than happy with the current performance of Dow CEO, Andrew Liveris. The New York Times notes that merger arbitrageurs on Wall Street have started to spell his surname backwards, and re-christened...
Resilience, team-work, key to survival
Last week, the blog spent 2 days at Wilton in the UK, one of the world's largest and most integrated chemical manufacturing sites. It also contains some of the world's major companies, including SABIC, Dow, INEOS, Huntsman and Lucite. The...
Cramer hits at Dow's Liveris
The credibility of some chemical industry CEO's seems to be under increasing attack, due to their apparent failure to develop proper contingency plans in advance of the current recession. One example this week comes from the USA, where Jim Cramer...
Dow Chemical moves to Plan B
A month ago, after the collapse of the K-Dow deal, the blog suggested that Dow would need to move quickly to a Plan B. It added that "nobody would be very surprised if it now sought to renegotiate the proposed...
Dow's debt ratings cut - could hit junk status
Over the last few weeks, INEOS had to scramble to get a covenant waiver from its lenders, and Lyondell went into Chapter 11. Now Dow's debt is facing a potential cut to junk status from the main ratings agencies. Dow's...
Kuwait "scraps" K-Dow JV
2008 has not been a good year for M&A in the chemical sector. First, there was the collapse of Hexion's Huntsman acquisition. Today, the Kuwait government has signalled its intention to "scrap" its $17.4bn deal with Dow to form K-Dow....
Dow cuts jobs, sets out future focus
Yesterday, Dow announced its new structure post the K-Dow JV and the planned acquisition of Rohm & Haas. This covered two main elements: • Implementation of November's cost reduction announcement • Dow's new organisation (the chart above) The cost reductions...
Dow, PIC, finalise K-Dow deal
Foresight, and long-term relationships, have paid off for Dow. Yesterday, CEO Andrew Liveris announced that a binding agreement has now been signed with Kuwait's PIC to form K-Dow Petrochemicals. PIC will pay $2bn less for their stake than originally agreed...
BASF warns on 2009
Back in August, the blog noted that BASF chairman Jurgen Hambrecht was forecasting that "the world will still continue to grow respectably", although he foresaw a temporary slowdown into H1 2009. Yesterday, however, this mood of relative optimism had disappeared...
Dow buys Rohm & Haas
Dow's potential interest in Rohm & Haas had been much rumoured since December, when it announced the petchem/polymer JV with Kuwait's PIC. That deal has yet to close, but further evidence of the growing link with Kuwait comes with...
The blog's first birthday
Its now a year since the blog started. Since then, 213 postings have appeared. It is now read in 72 countries and 620 cities (shown above). Most encouragingly, readership continues to steadily increase. Since January, it has risen a...
Dow warns on US economy
US economic conditions are 'ominous", and may worsen into 2009, according to Dow CEO, Andrew Liveris. "A month ago we might have said ... the US slowdown could be bottoming, but I don't think it is bottoming," Liveris said in...
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