Word: montecatini
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...between the two giants had been going on secretly for five months, but the news was finally broken last week by Italy's Communist paper L'Unità. The news: Royal Dutch/Shell has offered to buy half interest in two new petrochemical plants of Italy's Montecatini mineral and chemical complex, for a price somewhere between $150 million and $300 million. L'Unità's shrill attack on the proposed sale-which is still very much in the negotiating stage-was quickly picked up by left-wingers in Parliament, and it soon seemed...
Slender Markets. Montecatini has been a dazzling postwar success story, rising from war-torn rubble to branch into chemicals, plastics, fertilizers, paints and synthetic fibers and to set up plants in the U.S., Spain and The Netherlands. But like so many other European companies in the postwar period, its growth has been financed by perilous means. With not nearly enough loan money available in Europe's slender capital markets, many firms have tried to finance their rapid expansion with short-term borrowings. Montecatini has been borrowing Eurodollars-U.S. currency that circulates freely among European banks and industry without...
...When Montecatini was hit by rising labor costs (up 16.6% last year) and stiff competition from U.S. and other European chemical makers, its profits fell from $23.9 million to $21.6 million in 1962 despite a sales rise of 6.6%. The company was hard pressed to pay its debts and, to make matters worse, the cost of building its new petrochemical plant at Brindisi on Italy's heel overran its $160 million estimate by almost 50%. The setback was enough to topple fast-running Managing Director Piero Giustiniani, the driving force behind Montecatini's expansion, and leave full command...
Nobel Plastic. Already associated with Montecatini in marketing pesticides in Italy and making plastics in The Netherlands, Shell is anxious to get in on the promising petrochemical industry in Italy. For one thing, Shell wants to make sure that all the Italian petrochemical business does not eventually go to E.N.I., the state oil and gas monopoly that the big oil companies heartily dislike. In Montecatini, Shell will also have a good Italian outlet for its own crude...
Aside from wanting Shell's capital, Faina hopes to get rid of such unprofitable divisions as Montecatini's mining operations, expand the company's aluminum operations and concentrate more on producing its plastic discovery, polypropylene, which a fortnight ago won a Nobel prize for Chemist Giulio Natta. The first commercial use of polypropylene, made in Italy under the brand name Moplen, enables Montecatini to manufacture plastic materials that are tougher and more heat resistant than any so far produced. The plastic can be dyed any color and be made to float, is already widely used to make...