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Chemicals and the Economy

Cracker margins under pressure

Paul Ray’s excellent ICIS PE margin report provides plenty of food for thought this week. The chart above shows that European LDPE prices (the red line) have moved up quite sharply since June. But almost all of this improvement has been captured by cracker operators. Margins for integrated players (in yellow) recovered quite nicely, but […]

‘2009 – another difficult year’ says BMW

BMW, the world’s largest luxury car manufacturer, warned today that it is no longer immune from the global downturn: ‘Business conditions for the automobile industry deteriorated sharply again in the second quarter due to further ongoing steep rises in oil and raw material prices, the weakness of the US dollar, the impact of the international […]

Just saying ‘No’

I noted back in February that US banks were tightening lending standards into the housing sector. Now they are doing the same with business loans. The New York Times reports today that businesses around the country are finding it more difficult to borrow. As a result, companies that depend on bank financing are having to […]

Germany’s growth slows

Germany is the powerhouse economy of Europe. Its also a late-cycle economy, relying more on engineering and equipment sales than consumer spending. So until recently, its growth has seemingly not been affected by the global slowdown. But Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, indicated yesterday that a ‘significant fall’ was likely in economic growth next year. Industrial […]

A ‘profound’ downturn

The current downturn is different from anything that has occurred in the last 15 years. Policy makers are clearly worried. The UK’s Finance Minister, Alistair Darling, told Bloomberg today that ‘the effect of what has happened is going to be far more profound than people predicted at the start of the year’. He added that […]

Paris fashions – 70% reductions

I’m rather surprised my fellow blogger Barbara has missed this story. Still, it shows us commercial types have a life, too. Bloomberg reports that the economic downturn has caused major cuts in the prices of ‘shoes, bags and dresses’ during the current Paris fashion sales. France’s biggest department stores, Au Printemps and Galeries Lafayette are […]

The ‘difficult task of damage control’

The central bankers’ bank (the Bank for International Settlements) is not very impressed with its members’ efforts over the past year. Readers may remember that the BIS Report last year explicitly warned of the problems that were about to occur in world financial markets. This year’s Report expresses its disappointment about what central banks did […]

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 further 301%. The blog’s aim is to identify ‘the influences that may shape the chemical industry […]

Chemicals feel the wind of change

Three major themes ( ICIS Jun08.pdf ) emerged from our Asian Conference last week, co-organised with ICIS: • Change. The world is clearly changing very rapidly. Feedstock prices are rising. At the same time, major new capacity is starting to come on-stream in the Middle East, and in Asia. • Complexity. There are many more […]

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