Word: degussa
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Crude oil is the single most important raw material for the chemical industry. So when oil prices rise sharply?as they have over the past few months?chemical companies usually feel the pinch hardest. But when the big German chemical firm Degussa announced its earnings last month, the news was far from gloomy. Heinz-Joachim Wagner, Degussa's chief financial officer, calculated that the firm's raw-material costs had risen by more than a third over the past 18 months. Still, sales and earnings were up in the first half of this year and Wagner says he expects...
...Despite record-high oil prices, most economists expect the world economy to grow by at least 4% this year. While that's down from last year's stellar 5% growth, it's more than double the euro zone's growth rate and is enabling companies such as Degussa and its German competitors to raise prices and offset more than j1 billion in extra raw-material costs. "High oil prices certainly still matter, but probably only half as much as they did 15 to 20 years ago," says Kenneth Rogoff, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund...
...longer oil prices continue to climb, the greater the inflationary pressures will become. Rodrigo de Rato, the IMF's managing director, said last week that if high oil prices persist, "the impact on Asian growth will be considerable." Degussa's Wagner also warns that his forecast of continued profit growth depends on the stabilizing of raw-material prices. "There's tremendous uncertainty," says Deutsche Bank's Wall. For the moment, though, Europe's business executives, policymakers and central bankers are sitting tight, hoping their luck isn't about to change...
Whitacre brought that high intensity to ADM, where he arrived in 1989 after jobs as a researcher at Ralston Purina and a manager at Degussa, a German-owned chemical firm. He organized and ran ADM's fast-growing biochemical-products division. Under Whitacre's supervision the company began making the feed additive lysine in 1991; it now controls half the worldwide market. That made Whitacre a favorite of ADM chairman Dwayne Andreas and a likely successor to company president James Randall, 71. "He was very proud and excited about his work at ADM," says Combs, who kept in touch with...
...Degussa (W. Germany...