Rohm and Haas

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Rohm and Haas

logo
legal form Business unit
founding September 1, 1909
Seat Philadelphia , Pennsylvania
management Pierre Brondeau ( CEO & President )
Number of employees around 16,500 (2008)
Branch chemistry
Website Rohm & Haas

Former main gate of Röhm & Haas in Darmstadt
Lauterbourg plant

Rohm and Haas (formerly Röhm & Haas ) is an American chemical company headquartered in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania . As the Advanced Materials division, it is part of the US group Dow Chemical .

Products

The company manufactures various special products, mainly in the areas of polymer and plastic chemistry, special products for the electrical and semiconductor industries and applications in the area of ​​paints and varnishes.

history

Röhm und Haas was founded in 1907 by the German chemist Otto Röhm and the businessman Otto Haas in Esslingen am Neckar . The first commercial success was based on the product Oropon , an enzymatic agent that was used to stain leather. With this the previous traditional use of dog and bird droppings was replaced. On July 22, 1909, the company moved to Darmstadt .

From 1909 Otto Haas personally managed the Philadelphia branch in the USA. And when the company was sequestered when the USA entered the war in 1917 , the US company Rohm & Haas Co. was established, still under the management of Otto Haas. The high demand for leather products of the armaments industries at that time led to great economic success with Oropon in both countries.

The economic separation persisted after the war. Nevertheless, the two entrepreneurs continued to work together on technical developments and marketed them in both countries. Otto Röhm registered the Plexiglas brand in 1933 , which was also sold in both countries (in the USA as Plexiglas 'S').

Both companies remained closely linked until Röhm's death and the outbreak of war in 1939. And it was only after Haas' death that his family left the ownership of the German company at the end of 1970. This operated under the name Röhm GmbH from 1971, and in 1989 it was taken over by Hüls AG . Röhm GmbH has existed again as an independent company since 2019 through the spin-off of the methacrylate network and CyPlus GmbH from Evonik Industries .

The American Rohm & Haas Co. developed into one of the most important chemical companies in the country after the Second World War. During the Second World War and the subsequent Cold War, the armaments industry's demand for Plexiglas and other polymethyl methacrylate products helped the company achieve great economic success and growth.

Takeover by Dow

In July 2008, the Dow Chemical Company announced that it would take over Rohm & Haas for around US $ 15 billion. In January 2009, the takeover (already approved by the competition authorities) was postponed indefinitely because the Petrochemical Industries Company from Kuwait canceled a $ 7.5 billion investment at Dow and Dow was no longer able to finance the takeover. After Rohm & Haas had meanwhile announced that they wanted to legally enforce the takeover, an agreement was reached in March 2009 to carry out the transaction. A key factor here was the willingness of the two largest Rohm & Haas shareholders to accept up to USD 3 billion of the purchase price in the form of Dow preferred shares instead of cash.

After the takeover by Dow, the American salt manufacturer Morton Salt , which Rohm & Haas bought in 1999, was sold to the German K + S in April 2009 for USD 1.675 billion . Divestment sales like this should help Dow fund the Rohm & Haas acquisition.

Rohm & Haas in Germany

At the beginning of 2011, Rohm and Haas Deutschland GmbH had around 280 employees in Germany. The head office is in Frankfurt . The production of powder coatings is located in Arnsberg . The Bremen plant was closed in 2006 and demolished in 2007. Smaller departments are located in Bremen, Esslingen am Neckar and Feldkirchen. The production of monomers in Marl is operated as a joint venture .

Historical buildings

Individual evidence

  1. ^ History of the Darmstadt site Evonik Industries
  2. ↑ Rohm & Haas: Court to force Dow Chemical to buy . Manager magazine. January 27, 2009. Retrieved February 9, 2009.
  3. ^ Dow Chemical agreed with Rohm & Haas . Financial Times Germany. March 9, 2009. Archived from the original on March 10, 2009. Retrieved on April 16, 2009.
  4. ↑ K + S buys US salt manufacturer Morton Salt . Financial Times Germany. April 2, 2009. Archived from the original on April 3, 2009. Retrieved on April 16, 2009.
  5. ↑ www.rohmhaas.com: Rohm and Haas in Germany , accessed on January 24, 2011.

Web links