April 13 (ICIS) -- INEOS confirmed on Monday that it will move its headquarters from the UK to Switzerland to help make tax savings of around ┬450m ($616m) over the next four years. The chemical major's relocation proposal, which was initially announced in early March, has been approved by its lenders, including The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Lloyds TSB.
Since the beginning of April, a number of directors - including the group's founder, Jim Ratcliffe - have resigned from INEOS's UK holding company, according to documents filed at UK business registrar Companies House. ⌠As part of the process of change, the directors have resigned from the UK holding company and taken up their posts as directors of the Swiss holding company, INEOS spokesperson Richard Longden said. INEOS said that its day-to-day operations in the UK and elsewhere in the world would be unaffected by the move.
Meanwhile, INEOS said it was still in talks with potential investors over the future of its Grangemouth, UK, petrochemical facility. The company has reportedly been looking to sell a stake in the facility in order to ease its debts. ⌠We are in discussions with a number of interested parties about investment in growth opportunities at the Grangemouth refinery, but they are commercially confidential and it would be somewhat premature to speculate on whether any discussions might lead to investment or not, Longden said. ⌠INEOS has been open that it has been looking for opportunities to strengthen its balance sheet and is looking to improve the company, he added.
Last month INEOS completed the sale of its fluorochemicals business to Mexichem Fluor, a subsidiary of Mexico's Mexichem, as part of its strategy to focus on large-scale petrochemicals businesses.
Ineos is a petrochemical group.
In Russia Ineos's interests are represented by Ineos Polyolefins and IneosChlorVinyls.
The share in the Russian market in 2008:
PVC - 4.5%;
polyethylene - 1.9%
(HDPE - 2.8%, LDPE - 1.2%);
polypropylene - 1.4%
(PP-random - 22.1%, PP-impact - 2.0%);
polystyrene - 0.9%.
Imports by polymers processing technologies:
profile extrusion;
pipe extrusion;
film extrusion;
injection molding.