On A Very Sticky Wicket www.theage.com.au By John Richardson As one my colleagues said – it’s a good job the US stock markets were closed for Thanksgiving. Lots of efforts are being made to talk the Dubai World crisis and down – and despite drops in Middle East market equities – Asian markets rallied […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Reading The Minds of China’s Leadership
By John Richardson A lot of the projects which have pushed the world into severe overcapacity were based on the assumption that China would remain in big deficits for many basic commodity chemicals and polymers. It was thought that the world’s most-important market would remain a sink for surpluses for a very long time […]
China Polyolefin Demand Set To Rise By 30%
By John Richardson in Shanghai and Malini Hariharan China is set to see polyolefins demand growth of 30% or more this year, depending on the which particular grade, according to preliminary estimates prepared by companies and market analysts. Even if you take into account last year’s relatively low growth rates (I say relative because despite […]
Anxiety Builds Over China Growth
Will growth spread quickly enough? Source of picture: www.oraclemarketplace.co.uk By John Richardson Global chemicals production had returned to 2006 levels by October of this year, according to this slide ACCProduction09Versus06.ppt from the American Chemistry Council (ACC). Worldwide chemicals growth rates might not return to 2008 levels until 2012, Jurgen Hambrecht, CEO of BASF, warned […]
Twists expected in the LyondellBasell-Reliance story
By Malini Hariharan (Malini is now joint blogger for Asian Chemical Connections) Reliance’s bid for LyondellBasell is likely to be a long drawn out affair with potential for complications from competitive bids. I talked to some sources familiar with the transaction and they say that Reliance is unlikely to be the only company interested in […]
Update 2: Reliance Betting On US Competitiveness
He’s not bad at making money Source of picture: www.dealbreaker.com SOME of the logic behind Reliance Industries’ bid for LyondellBasell could be a recognition that the globalisation of petrochemicals markets may have gone into partial reverse. A climate bill passed by the House of Representatives has a provision for taxing imports from countries where emissions […]
Update 1: Reliance said to be offering $10-12bn
Reliance Industries – which is attempting to buy LyondellBasell – is offering $10-12bn, according to this report from Reuters quoting two sources with direct knowledge of the deal. This would be one of the biggest-ever acquisitions by an Indian company. In 2007, Tata Steel bought Corus for $13bn. Reliance raised $660m through a share sale in September. […]
Reliance Bid For LyondellBasell Confirmed
Reliance Industries has made an offer for LyondellBasell says an official statement released yesterday on the LyondellBasell website: “LyondellBasell has received a preliminary non-binding offer from Reliance Industries Limited to acquire for cash a controlling interest in the company contemporaneously with the company’s emergence from Chapter 11 reorganization. “This offer is in addition to the […]
China Real Estate: When Is A Bubble A Bubble?
Source of picture: www.managingthedragon.com By John Richardson I love the phrase used by Andrew Peaple of the Wall Street Journal in this article on China’s property “bubble”: Getting a straight answer is like “nailing jelly to a wall”, in other words xxxxxx impossible. I will be in Shanghai next week on a business […]
Unravelling China’s polyester market
By Malini Hariharan (Malini is now joint blogger for Asian Chemical Connections) China’s immense appetite this year for all petrochemicals has been puzzling many of us. This blog has been regularly asking questions and some answeres for the polyester and PTA markets were provided by YJ Kim of PCI Xylenes & Polyesters at the Indian […]
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