Saudi Aramco appoints first woman to the board

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Saudi Aramco, the world's top oil company which is preparing to go public, said it has appointed new members to its board including a female executive, a milestone for Saudi Arabia and the oil industry where there are few women executives, reported Reuters.

The appointments, which bring in more international experience, come as the Saudi government plans to float around 5 percent of Aramco in an initial public offering (IPO) - the world's largest - later this year or early 2019.

Saudi Arabian Minister of Finance Mohammed al-Jadaan and Minister of Economy and Planning Mohammed al-Tuwaijri were appointed as members of the board of directors, Aramco said in a statement.

They are joined by Lynn Laverty Elsenhans, the former chairwoman, president and CEO of U.S. oil refiner Sunoco Inc. from 2008 to 2012.

Other new members also include Peter Cella, former president & CEO of Chevron Philips Chemical Co. LP, and Andrew Liveris, director of DowDuPont Inc, and the CEO of the Dow Chemical Company. Liveris's appointment is effective as of July 1, Aramco said.

The five new members of Aramco's board will join six returning members including Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih, who is also Aramco's chairman, and Amin Nasser, Aramco's CEO. Minister of State Ibrahim al-Assaf and Managing Director of the government-owned Public Investment Fund (PIF) Yasir al-Rumayyan also remain on the board.

The outgoing board members are Majid Al-Moneef, advisor to the Saudi Royal Court; Khaled al-Sultan, Rector of King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals; and Peter Woicke, former managing director of the World Bank and former vice president of the International Finance Corporation.

Appointment decisions to the new 11-member board of directors are made by the Saudi government.

Elsenhans was named by Forbes as one of the world's most powerful women in 2008. Prior to her role at Sunoco, Elsenhans was the executive vice president of global manufacturing for Royal Dutch Shell, where she worked for more than 28 years.

She also served on Baker Hughes's board of directors from 2012 to July 2017 and sits on the board of GlaxoSmithKline.

Only a handful of Saudi women are appointed to the board of major Saudi companies but that is slowly changing in the conservative kingdom, where women are subject to a male guardianship system which in many cases restricts their opportunities to work.

As MRC informed before, Saudi Arabia wants to complete talks with strategic investors such as China, Japan and South Korea before deciding where to list shares in state oil company Saudi Aramco.

Saudi Aramco is an integrated oil and chemicals company, a global leader in hydrocarbon production, refining processes and distribution, as well as one of the largest global oil exporters. It manages proven reserves of crude oil and condensate estimated at 261.1bn barrels, and produces 9.54 million bbl daily. Headquartered in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, the company employs over 61,000 staff in 77 countries.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Specialty chemicals company LANXESS has followed up its successful fiscal year 2017 by posting the best quarterly result in its history, and has raised its earnings guidance for 2018, as per the company's press release.

In the opening quarter, global sales rose by almost 7 percent to EUR 2.565 billion, compared with EUR 2.401 billion in the previous year. EBITDA pre exceptionals improved significantly by 14 percent to EUR 375 million, compared with EUR 328 million in the prior-year quarter. Key factors in this positive performance chiefly included the contributions of the Chemtura businesses acquired in 2017. In addition, the phosphorus chemicals business purchased from Solvay in February 2018 made its first contribution. Negative currency effects curbed the positive EBITDA performance. The EBITDA margin pre exceptionals was up by almost one percentage point on the previous year at 14.6 percent. Net income improved significantly by 23 percent to EUR 96 million, compared with EUR 78 million the year before.

“LANXESS remains firmly on the track. We have made a dynamic start to the new fiscal year and improved our profitability again. This shows that our efforts to move the company forwards are increasingly paying off,” said Matthias Zachert, Chairman of the LANXESS Board of Management.

The Group has raised its guidance for fiscal year 2018, and now expects EBITDA pre exceptionals to increase by between 5 percent and 10 percent for the “New LANXESS” segments (Advanced Intermediates, Specialty Additives, Performance Chemicals and Engineering Materials). In the previous year, comparable EBITDA pre exceptionals stood at around EUR 925 million. At the annual press conference in March, Zachert envisaged only a slight increase for the year as a whole. The ARLANXEO segment, a joint venture between LANXESS and Saudi Aramco for synthetic rubber, is not included in the guidance for 2018, and will be reported separately from the second quarter onwards.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) - Brazilian state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras) concluded the sale of petrochemical assets for USD435 million to Mexican petrochemicals company Alpek, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Petrobras said it sold its stakes in Companhia Petroquimica de Pernambuco and Companhia Integrada Textil de Pernambuco in line with a previously announced decision to divest itself from certain businesses and exit petrochemical operations.

As MRC informed earlier, in April, BP announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding to explore areas of cooperation with Petroleo Brasileiro S.A. (Petrobras).
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- ARLANXEO, one of the world’s leading suppliers of synthetic elastomers, has increased its prices for its Buna and X_Butyl products globally effective May 1, 2018, as per the company's press release.

The price increase is driven by the overall market situation.

ARLANXEO has contacted its customers individually regarding the price increases.

ARLANXEO’s rubber products distributed under the brand names Buna and X_Butyl are used in the tire industry and for several non-tire applications like medical and pharmaceutical, plastic modification, gum or technical rubber goods.

As MRC wrote before, ARLANXEO is expanding its global chloroprene rubber (CR) production at the site in Dormagen, Germany. The production capacity there will be increased to as much as 70,000 tons per year overall that will be available to the market already during the first quarter of 2019. ARLANXEO is investing an upper single-digit million in the expansion project overall.

ARLANXEO was established in April 2016 as a joint venture of Lanxess - a world-leading specialty chemicals company based in Cologne, Germany - and Saudi Aramco - a major global energy and chemicals enterprise headquartered in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The two partners each hold a 50-percent interest in the joint venture. The business operations of ARLANXEO are assigned to the High Performance Elastomers and Tire & Specialty Rubbers business units.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The incoming CEO of German chemical giant BASF SE has reportedly confirmed that, unlike path chosen by its U.S. competitors Dow Chemical Co. and DuPont Co., he has absolutely no plans to break up the company, as per Plasticsnews.

Martin Brudermueller, in a May 3 report by Reuters, has voiced his support for the company’s so-called Verbund, the integrated value chain where a company owns businesses throughout the production process.

“We often hear the Verbund getting criticized for being too rigid. That’s not true,” said Brudermueller who is taking the helm at BASF on May 4.

“If you have everything under one roof, you can coordinate things much better, that is the sense in which we will develop it further. You wouldn’t normally want to sell attractive businesses that are growing,” he told Reuters and other reporters in remarks released late on May 2.

Dow and DuPont merged to become DowDuPont Inc., but plan to separate into three separate companies.
MRC