Starting 9 September, Jorge Nogueira is chief executive officer of Arlanxeo. He succeeds Jan Paul de Vries, who has left the synthetic rubber manufacturer to “seek a new professional challenge.” Prior to his appointment as CEO, Nogueira headed the company’s Tire & Specialty Rubbers (TSR) business unit, and he been a member of the Arlanxeo Executive Board since the joint venture was founded in April 2016.
At this year’s Annual Stockholders’ Meeting, specialty chemicals company, the Board of Management at Lanxess AG proposed a dividend of €0.60 for the 2015 fiscal year. This is approximately 20 per cent higher than the dividend paid a year earlier and equals a total dividend payout of some €55 million.
State-owned oil company Saudi Aramco and specialty chemicals company Lanxess report that all pertinent authorities have cleared the joint venture agreement signed by the two parties last September, and as a result their joint synthetic rubber company will come into being on 1 April 2016. The 50/50 joint venture will be known as Arlanxeo.
Dr Hubert Fink, head of Lanxess AG’s Advanced Industrial Intermediates business unit, will become the fourth member of the company’s Board of Management on 1 October. Fink’s area of responsibility on the board will cover the Advanced Intermediates segment, including the Advanced Industrial Intermediates and Saltigo business units, and the High Performance Materials business unit; he will also assume responsibility for the Global Procurement & Logistics group function and the Production, Technology, Safety and Environment (PTSE) group function, which combines all production-related services.
Specialty chemicals company Lanxess and Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, today signed an agreement to establish a synthetic rubber joint venture. Lanxess and Aramco Overseas Company, a subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, will each hold a 50 per cent stake in the €2.75 billion venture, with Saudi Aramco paying approximately €1.2 billion in cash for its 50 per cent share after deducting debt and other financial liabilities.
Specialty chemicals manufacturer Lanxess states it has initiated a carve-out process to transfer its rubber business to a legally independent business entity within the Lanxess Group. The plan is for the new entity to include the company’s Tire & Specialty Rubbers (TSR) and High Performance Elastomers (HPE) business units, which together operate 20 production facilities and have some 3,700 employees.
Talk of a “three-phase realignment” and workforce downsizing dominated the release of Lanxess AG’s third quarter 2014 results this month. The specialty chemicals company says it is making “rapid progress” with its realignment programme and aims to achieve annual savings of €150 million by the end of 2016 via the implementation of the first realignment phase, which culls the company’s global headcount by around 1,000. Half these reductions will occur in Germany, where Lanxess is based, and mainly affect the company’s administrative and service units, marketing and sales, along with research and development.
Although volumes at Lanxess increased two per cent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2014, this could not fully offset the five per cent decline in selling prices it experienced. Therefore, the company’s overall sales fell 5.7 per cent year-on-year to €2.02 billion. “The continuing low earnings level and increasing competition show the need for further action to improve competitiveness,” said Board of Management chairman Zachert.
Preparation for certain aspects of the restructuring awaiting Lanxess AG has already begun, and come at a time when the company is able to report improved year-on-year performance. The group-wide programme initiated by the company’s Board of Management on 24 July 2014 will see the number of Lanxess business units shrink from 14 to ten and will involve cuts to the company’s global administrative workforce. The business unit mergers will take effect 1 January 2015.
