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Any spare change, Mister?

Business, China, Company Strategy, Europe, Middle East, Olefins, Polyolefins, US
By John Richardson on 09-Jan-2009
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It’s all about hoarding cash over the next few years, but survival might not even be possible for even the best managed of companies if Martin Wolf’s worst-case scenario comes true. The Financial Times columnist writes of the unravelling of globalisation into the protectionism that characterised the Great Depression years if the Obama stimulus package fails.

There is a good chance it will fail, fears the Federal Reserve in the notes released from its December meeting.

At a chemicals company level, leverage is obviously out and the private equity model thoroughly discredited – perhaps for good.

You can argue that the biggest mistake of the biggest casualty so far, LyondellBasell, was timing as the acquisition of Lyondell Chemicals took place in December 2007. Asset prices were then at their peak with many believing that the boom would continue forever, despite the already rapidly deflating US housing bubble. As recently as March last year, The Economist was talking of Asia’s decoupling as the potential saviour of the global economy.

But leverage is itself the problem because of how the extraordinary multiples over tangibe, realisable assets were generated through the shadow banking system, creating the climate for deals such as the Basell takeover of Lyondell to occur. It is this badly regulated, free-for-all system that’s brought the global economy down.

Maybe we will never again see the break up chemical companies for sale to private, or public, companies burdened by enormous amounts of debt.

Perhaps the well-integrated chemicals company with sufficient diversification to provide compensating cash flows when a particular subsidiary is struggling is the way forward. Is this yet another case of back to the future?

In an even better position are the state-owned giants in the Middle East and China. They are in the enviable position of cash in hand, and government ownership structures that guarantee funding if that cash was to ever run scarce. These are the only companies I can see able to make the acquisitions the industry now needs.