This article from Reuters highlights the danger of overpaying for assets in the current India M&A frenzy.Perhaps its point about the overall of over-confidence is valid, especially given that previous deals were small scale. Other Indian companies, following Tata Steel’s lead, are starting to bid the big league. Integrating small acquisitions to add value is […]
Asian Chemical Connections
The case for investing in Indonesia
Indonesia before 1997 had three cracker projects and huge demand growth. It was mentioned in the same breath as China. And, of course, then came the crisis. But this year GDP growth could be the highest since the crisis with the government in sound financial condition. The case for petrochemical investment is obvious as monomers […]
Could drug dealers be rehabilitated into the petchem industry?
An interesting question, and one that Def Poet Tommy Buttons, the rap artist with a difference (he has a brain) might want to address. Click on this highly amusing link and listen to how he compares the life of a drugs dealer with that of a Nasdeq trader. Substitute Nasdeq trader for a petrochemicals trader […]
The flawed art of supply & demand forecasting
A guest blog – see Vanishing Post Boxes on this great blog by the authors of the book Freakonomics put me in mind of all those demand and supply forecasts that are invariably wrong. Yes, I know I’ve written about this ad nauseum – see my last article on this subject.But surely, there has to […]
Is Indonesia poised to take off?
I can just about remember when Indonesia was talked about in the same breath as China – huge latent demand, lots of foreign direct investment and great natural resources. Then came the Asian financial crisis and economic ruin. But now, as this article from the Economist indicates, the government had paid off its debt to […]
Bringing the sceptics and the greenies together
The famous “Skeptical” environmentalist (unfortunately, the American spelling and therefore the wrong spelling), Bjorn Lomborg argues against the Kyoto Protocol in this article from the special green edition of our magazine, ICIS Chemical Business.He says, in short, that all the fuss about Kyoto is a waste of time and effort. Even if it is fully […]
The weird and not so wonderful world of biofuels
The petrochemicals industry generally gets a bad press, but producers are unlikely to ever be charged with depriving the public of food. In fact, plastic packaging could go a long way to solving problems such as India’s – where 40% of food rots before it can be delivered. Biofuels producers, however, although they have ostensibly […]
Reliance predicts a big India polymer deficit
The optimism seems infectious: Reliance’s market capitalisation breached the RS3 trillion level today, placing the giant in an elite group of only three Indian companies.And the petrochemicals major is predicting 12.59m tonnes of polymer demand in India in 2011-12 with local supply at slightly below 8m tonnes/year. The forecast big deficit is based on a […]
Will Japan’s rate rise do any good?
The Bank of Japan has decided to raise interest rates – from 0.25 to 0.5%. This could weaken the yen, thereby damaging the country’s export-led recovery. For the petrochemical players, the benefits of a 21-year low yen have been offset by the increased cost of importing naphtha. The bank is also banking on last summer’s […]
Prepare for a legislative flood
Global leaders from the Group of Eight rich nations plus Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa have agreed that developing countries will have to face targets for cutting emissions as well as developed countries.If these noble words are followed by action, prepare to be legislated against. I wrote yesterday about Rex Tillerson and his […]
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