Dow Chemical & Rohm & Haas Completing Merger Dispute Deal

Dow Chemical Co. (DOW) ccompleted its dispute with Rohm & Haas Co. (ROH), agreeing to pay the $78 a share as originally established. Dow Rohm & Haas struck a $15.3 billion merger deal in July 2008. 

The legal battle started after Rohm & Haas sued Dow in January after the company stalled on the merger which Dow blamed due to the frozen credit markets. Dow, like other companies in the world faced threatening decline in its business due to the global recession. 

Several parties have agreed to help Dow to pay for its purchase of Rohm & Haas including a $3 billion in funding from Berkshire Hathaway and $1 billion from the Kuwait Investment Authority. 

Dow & PIC Setting up a JV Petchem

Dow Chemical and Kuwait’s Petrochemical Industries Co (PIC) have been reportedly signing a mutual agreement for a $17.4 billion K-Dow petrochemicals joint venture. It is estimated that K-Dow would generate $11 to $15 billion annual sales with the new JV which includes Dow's existing joint-ventures MEGlobal and Equipolymers. 

The 50:50 JV company will use Dow's strength from its olefins and polyolefins capacity turning it to be a major producer of petrochemicals and plastics including polyethylene, ethylene amines, ethanolamines, polypropylene and polycarbonate. K-Dow is also seen to be one of the important polypropylene technology and market related catalysts licensor.

Dow - Rohm and Haas Deal Amounting $750 Million

US producer Dow Chemical in a buy-over deal with Rohm and Haas will need to pay a $750m (€473m) termination fee if it abandoned its $18.8bn deal to buy the specialty-chemical firm, Rohm and Haas. The deal was a two-way and deal and if Rohm and Haas subjected to a pull-out, the company had to pay Dow a $600m termination fee.

Dow Stop Production on Polystyreme Poor Economics

Cyclical petrochemical business has brought Dow Europe to temporarily stop production of all its polystyrene (PS) resins at Terneuzen, the Netherlands. However, some operating units across Europe will still operating at reduced rates. Dow Polystyrene (PS) has production plants at Tessenderlo, Belgium, Bilbao in Spain, Schkopau in Germany and Lavrion in Greece and the Terneuzen unit which has an annual capacity of 50,000 tonnes/year.

The feedstock price hike comes mostly from the recent increase in global oil price. PS demand has been low for several months impactin producers in Europe including BASF, Total Petrochemicals, Dow, Polimeri Europa and INEOS NOVA.

DOW Chemicals Growing Business in Asia

Dow Chemicals is reportedly making major investments will be made by Dow Chemicals' performance fluids business in the Asia Pacific region. New R&D chemical plants are planned for China and India in late 2008 targeting research for increasing output of new water-soluble fluids' at its Optimal JV with PETRONAS.

New Dow/BASF HHPO Technology Plant Delayed

Dow/BASF joint-venture for a 300,000 tonne/year capacity hydrogen peroxide-to-propylene oxide (HPPO) plant at Antwerp, Belgium is delayed until the second part of 2008 which was previously scheduled to come on-stream in May 2008. This will be the first HPPO petrochemical plant in the world incorporating the JV technology by Dow and BASF. It was claimed that the process technology is more economical and environmentally friendly.

Russia Polyurethane Project By Dow, Dipol & JSC Nord JV

Dow Chemicals (Europe) together with Dow Izolan, Dow's Russian joint venture, Dipol Chemical and JSC Nord are set to explore the possibility of producing rigid polyurethane (PU) in Russia with production will be sold to JSC Nord’s Polyurethane Unit for 6000 tonnes in 2008.

The group of companies are looking at the economic feasibility of the Joint-venture PU project expected to be completed by end of 2008. The main driving force to build the PU unit in Russia, despite political instability is that Asian competition is skyrocketing, coupled with the weak US dollar.

The JV hopes that products will be focused to Russian's home appliance companis for cost saving with the polyurethane producers.

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