Unilever’s CEO Alan Jope has had to bury his hopes of buying GlaxoSmithKline’s consumer drugs portfolio. After shareholders questioned the move, and analysts said that due to the relatively low price its third offer, worth £50 billion, was “as good as dead, the London-based consumer giant pulled the plug. Now it looks as if the CEO may face more trouble, as an activist investor has stepped into the fray.
More than 150 former employees of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have appealed to lawmakers in the state of Virginia not to approve new Republican governor Glenn Youngkin’s nomination of former EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler as the state’s Secretary of Natural Resources.
US green technology company Vertimass has signed a Letter of Intent with Denmark’s European Energy to integrate their technologies for capturing CO2 and converting it into hydrocarbon products, such as renewable fuels and chemicals.
Dutch-based global distributor Barentz International, specializing in life science ingredients, has acquired unspecified assets of Chemcel, a distributor of specialty ingredients for the Mexican pharmaceutical and nutrition markets. Financial terms were not disclosed.
In a 6:3 vote, the US Supreme Court has temporarily blocked the Biden administration from implementing its executive order requiring companies with more than 100 employees to have their staff vaccinated against Covid-19 or tested weekly. At the same time, it voted 5:4 to let stand the order requiring that all of the more than 10 million healthcare workers be vaccinated.
Canadian clean technology company Loop Industries and French partner Suez have secured exclusive rights until June 2022 to buy a parcel of land in Port-Jerome-sur-Seine in northern France to build their first chemical recycling plant for PET.
US private equity firm OpenGate Capital has bought two US chemical distributors in the space of a week. The first purchase on Jan. 11 was Chemsolv, a regional distributor of commodity and specialty chemicals headquartered in Roanoke, Virginia. The business was acquired from the Austin family, who continue to hold a stake.
As demand for polyamide (nylon) continues to skyrocket and the market tightens, BASF has become the second major producer to announce a fresh investment in one of the polymer’s starting materials, hexamethylenediamine (HMD).
US biotech AgBiome and Italy’s Lamberti are collaborating to develop biological crop protection solutions. AgBiome has expertise in discovering and commercializing new biological active ingredients for agriculture, while Lamberti supplies formulation technology and specialized chemistry.
Rumors that German pharmaceutical producer CordenPharma is up for sale have resurfaced following fresh reports that the company’s owner, International Chemical Investors Group (ICIG), plans to formally solicit bids for the business at the end of January.
GlobalWafers’ planned takeover of Wacker Chemie’s remaining 30.8% stake in silicon wafers manufacturer Siltronic is looking somewhat shaky as the German economics ministry – following a year’s review of the plans – apparently remains unconvinced that the $5.3 billion deal is in the national interest.
US paints and coatings group PPG has announced plans to invest more than $10 million to expand production of OEM coatings at its site in Weingarten, Germany. An addition to its existing facility will be able to produce more than 5,000 t/y of waterborne basecoats when it goes on stream in the second quarter of 2022.
German multinational engineering group Thyssenkrupp has changed the name of its electrolysis arm from Uhde Chlorine Engineers to Thyssenkrupp Nucera, at the same time announcing that it is considering an initial public offering (IPO) for the business.
German biotechnology company Enzymaster has completed the acquisition of Fujian Sanming Minhe Pharmaceutical Technology Co. (Sanming Minhe). Located in China’s Fujian province, 40% of Sanming Minhe’s capacity will be dedicated to manufacturing products using Enzymaster’s processing technology, increasing Enzymaster’s overall production capacity by 50%.
Swedish speciality chemicals producer Perstorp has acquired GEO Specialty Chemicals’ Di-Methylolpropionic Acid (DMPA) business, a move the company said underscores its commitment to providing sustainable specialty solutions to the resins and coatings segment as well as enhancing its strategic presence in polyurethane and alkyds dispersions for waterborne coatings.
Activist investor Starboard Value has nominated four directors to Huntsman’s board, launching a potential proxy fight. Its candidates are Jeffrey Smith, Starboard’s founder and CEO; James Gallogly, former LyondellBasell CEO; Sandra Beach Lin, former CEO of solar silicon firm Calisolar, former executive vice president of Celanese and president of its then-plastics arm Ticona; and Susan Schnabel, co-founder and co-managing partner of aPriori Capital Partners.
GlaxoSmithKline said it has received and rejected three bids from consumer products giant Unilever to acquire its consumer drugs arm. The latest offer, worth £50 billion (£41.7 billion in cash and £8.3 billion in Unilever shares), fundamentally undervalues" the business,” the UK pharma said.
US polyamide specialist Ascend Performance Materials has made a final decision to build a new production facility for hexamethylene diamine (HMD) and specialty chemicals in Lianyungang, China’s Xuwei New Area Park. Neither cost nor capacity have been disclosed.
German chemical company Wacker has signed a contract with Danish biotech Biosyntia to develop a large-scale production process for biotin based on the fermentation of plant-based raw materials. This would provide a sustainable alternative to the synthetic version that is currently on the market and made from petrochemicals.
SABIC has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with parent group Saudi Aramco and Poland’s PKN Orlen to explore potential project opportunities in central and eastern Europe.
German ethanol producer CropEnergies has entered into an agreement with Johnson Matthey covering technology license, engineering and technical services for a 50,000 t/y renewable ethyl acetate plant. CropEnergies said the project, which would cost between €80 million and €100 million, would also lay the first foundation stone of Biobased Chemicals as a new business line.
Globally active EPC and turnkey project management company Nuberg EPC recently won a contract from Uzbekistan Hydrogen Peroxide JV to build and provide technology and engineering for an 85 t/d, 50% chemical-grade hydrogen peroxide plant in Uzbekistan’s Navoi region.
Up to now, the name BioNTech has popped up mostly in one breath with Pfizer, the company’s US partner in developing the mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine marketed as Comirnaty. The German biotech, however, is increasingly broadening its horizons. On two consecutive days, Jan. 10 and Jan. 11, the company announced one major new collaboration project and gave an update on a second, both involving British companies.
Italy’s Sun Chemical, a wholly owned subsidiary of Japan’s DIC Corp., has bought compatriot adhesives and polymers manufacturer Sapici and its holding company Finape. Financial terms were not disclosed. The companies formed a strategic alliance in 2017 to market Sapici’s lamination adhesives under Sun Chemical’s brand name.
US chemicals and materials group Gelest has named Jonathan Goff as President effective immediately. He succeeds Barry Arkles, founder of Gelest, who has officially stepped down from his role as CEO on Dec. 31, 2021.
German chemical distributor Oqema has bought Spain’s Tecnufar Iberia, strengthening its presence in the region’s food ingredients and additives market. Tecnufar, which has about 20 employees, is headquartered in Madrid, where it also operates a warehouse along with two others in Barcelona and Valencia.
Bayer will potentially pump well over $1 billion into another major gene therapy collaboration, this time with Brisbane, California-based Mammoth BioSciences. In the pact announced during the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, held virtually for the second consecutive year, the German pharma and agriculture group said it aims to tap the US company’s knowhow in CRISPR systems to develop in vivo gene-editing therapies.
AstraZeneca and Ionis Pharmaceuticals have finalized their agreement to develop and commercialize investigational therapy eplontersen, formerly known as Ionis-TTR-L. The companies previously announced their intention to collaborate on Dec. 7, 2021.
As part of a collaboration agreed last year, petrochemicals giant Ineos will test Plastic Energy’s chemical – or advanced – recycling technology at the refinery in Grangemouth, Scotland owned by Petroineos, its joint venture with PetroChina.
Pfizer and BioNTech expect to have a modified version of their mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine ready to tackle the Omicron variant by March, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said on Jan. 10. The partners already have begun manufacturing trial doses at their own risk, he said, but did not disclose where they will be sold, only that the doses will be available for countries that need them quickly.
South Korean engineering and construction group DL E&C has won a contract worth about €1.17 billion for work on plants that are part of the proposed Russian Baltic Chemical Complex to be built at the seaport of Ust-Luga, near the Gulf of Finland.
Germany’s Merck has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Exelead, a US biopharmaceutical CDMO, for around $780 million in cash. The Indianapolis, Indiana-based company specializes in complex injectable formulations, including Lipid Nanoparticle (LNP)-based drug delivery technology, which is key to mRNA therapeutics and vaccines for indications such as Covid-19.
The US Supreme Court is holding a special session today, Jan. 7, to deliberate on whether the administration of president Joe Biden can enforce a vaccine-or-test mandate for large private companies and a vaccine mandate for many healthcare workers. The review, which reflects inconclusive lower court decisions, is a departure from the normal proceeding of reviewing challenges to a binding verdict.
US biotech Amyris has formed a 50:50 joint venture with compatriot clinical-stage immunotherapy firm ImmunityBio to accelerate the commercialization of a next-generation Covid-19 vaccine. The companies signed a binding agreement for the venture last November.
German chemicals giant BASF plans to launch a corporate share buyback program worth up to €3 billion, beginning this month and stretching over nearly two years, until Dec. 31, 2023 at the latest.
