BUSINESS CONCENTRATES
SYMRISE BUYING DIANA FOR $1.8 BILLION German flavor and fragrance firm Symrise has agreed to buy Diana Group, a maker of natural food ingredients, from the private equity firm Ardian for $1.8 billion. Diana’s products are used in human, pet, and infant foods and include color, texture, flavor, and nutraceutical ingredients. The acquisition will give Symrise a jump-start in the fast-growing business of pet food. In 2013, Diana had sales of $588 million and an operating profit margin of 21%. The company employs more than 2,000 people and has expertise in sensory and nutrition science, natural ingredient extraction, and plant cell culture.—MMB
SHINTECH CONSIDERS LOUISIANA CRACKER Shintech, the U.S. arm of Japan’s Shin-Etsu Chemical, is planning to build an ethylene steam cracker in Louisiana. The polyvinyl chloride maker has filed for permits with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality for the unit, which would have 500,000 metric tons per year of capacity. With the permit application, Shintech is the 11th company to publicly disclose plans for a U.S. ethylene cracker based on cheap raw materials extracted from shale gas. The company says the ethylene project will likely be sited on industrial land it already owns.—AHT
OXFORD SPINS OFF BUCKYBALL MAKER
U OF OXFORD
The University of Oxford has spun off a new company named Designer Carbon Materials, which aims to commercialize a process for manufacturing fullerenes, also known as buckyballs. The firm’s technology is based on research by Kyriakos Porfyrakis from the university’s department of materials. The new firm plans to produce a range of materials that can be inserted into the Porfyrakis shows off a model of an endohedral fullerene.
NEWCOMER NABS CHEMTURA AGROCHEMICAL BUSINESS Chemtura has agreed to sell its AgroSolutions unit to Platform Specialty Products for $1 billion. The AgroSolutions unit is a supplier of seed treatments, insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, and plant growth regulators. It had revenues of $449 million and earnings before taxes of $101 million in 2013. Platform is a relative newcomer to the chemical world. Formed last year as a holding company in specialties, its first deal was the $1.8 billion purchase of specialty chemical formulator MacDermid. Platform is targeting high-growth companies that have a modest asset footprint. Martin E. Franklin, Platform’s chairman, says the Chemtura unit “has many of the same attractive business characteristics as MacDermid.” Platform will continue to purchase agrochemical active ingredients from Chemtura. Leveraging AgroSolutions’ distribution network and global product registrations, Platform hopes to purchase or license active ingredients from other companies. For Chemtura, the sale will help it focus on flame retardants, brominated chemicals, organometallics, petroleum additives, and urethanes. These businesses, Chemtura management believes, are poised for growth.—AHT
hollow interiors of the spherical carbon cage structures, an approach that can create novel and intriguing properties, Porfyrakis says. The firm expects its first customer orders for such endohedral fullerenes to be placed within the next few months.—AS
GORE ENGINEER CHARGED WITH TRADE SECRETS THEFT A chemical engineer who worked for fluorochemical expert W. L. Gore & Associates has been arrested on charges that he stole trade secrets from his former employer. Kwang Seoung Jeon was detained at a Newark, Del., hotel on April 2, the day on which he had tickets to fly back to his native South Korea. According to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, Jeon was working on camouflage fabrics. After receiving a poor performance review, he downloaded proprietary data from Gore’s computers, quit his job, and told his employer he was going back to South Korea to work as a consultant.—MSR
MOMENTIVE MATERIALS FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY Facing millions of dollars in debt payments it cannot continue to make, silicones maker Momentive Performance Materials has filed for reorganization in U.S. Bankruptcy CEN.ACS.ORG
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Court in White Plains, N.Y. Creditors have already agreed on a reorganization plan that, according to CEO Craig Morrison, “will eliminate more than $3 billion of debt from Momentive’s balance sheet.” Momentive, which had a net loss of $464 million on sales of $2.4 billion in 2013, expects to emerge from bankruptcy at the end of the year. Much of Momentive’s debt dates back to 2006 when the private equity firm Apollo Global Management acquired the silicones business from General Electric for $3.2 billion. Slow silicone demand from key industries such as construction and electronics, exacerbated by poor growth in Asia, has hurt Momentive, says John P. Rogers, a Moody’s debt analyst.—MSR
PEPSICO, SENOMYX TO ENHANCE SALTINESS Senomyx, a taste science company, will receive research funding from PepsiCo for its 2014 salt taste program, with options to extend the funding. PepsiCo will receive nonexclusive rights to any salt flavor modifiers Senomyx discovers during the research period. Senomyx uses high-throughput screening methods to discover synthetic and natural molecules that trigger human taste buds. In March, a sweetness-enhancing ingredient developed by Senomyx and partners PepsiCo and Firmenich was granted the designation of “generally recognized as safe” for use in beverages by the expert panel of the
Flavor & Extract Manufacturers Association (C&EN, March 17, page 8).—MMB
ALBEMARLE SELLING IBUPROFEN UNIT SI Group has agreed to acquire Albemarle’s ibuprofen, antioxidants, and propofol businesses for an undisclosed sum. Albemarle, a leading supplier of ibuprofen, characterizes the deal as a step in its plan to focus on core businesses such as catalysts, bromine, custom fine chemicals, and performance chemicals. SI Group, a manufacturer of chemical intermediates, resins, and other nonpharmaceutical chemicals, says the acquisition will advance an effort to develop a pharmaceutical chemical business. Frank A. Bozich, CEO of the Schenectady, N.Y.based company, says the deal is the largest in SI Group’s history.—RM
GEVO WARNS INVESTORS OF FUNDING SHORTAGE Gevo, a producer of isobutyl alcohol made from cornstarch, has alerted investors that it may not be able to obtain the financing it needs to pay for operations through the end of this year. In an annual filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, Gevo reported it incurred a net loss of $66.8 million in 2013 and has an accumulated deficit of $262.2 million. The conditions raise
substantial doubt about the firm’s ability to continue as a going concern, it warned. In 2013, Gevo worked to improve the technology at its retrofitted corn ethanol facility in Luverne, Minn., and earned only $8.2 million in revenue.—MMB
NOVARTIS EXITS RNAi THERAPEUTICS Novartis is shutting down its remaining RNAi drug discovery operations, a decision prompted by the ongoing difficulty in developing effective methods of formulating and delivering RNAi-based therapeutics. The company entered the field in 2005 through a broad partnership with Alnylam but in 2010 turned down an option to extend that collaboration. That pact gave Novartis the rights to 31 drug targets against which it could develop RNAi therapeutics. About 26 people in Cambridge, Mass., were focused on RNAi. Although the exit will cost at least some jobs, a Novartis spokesperson notes that a small team will be maintained and partnerships will be considered if technical issues are resolved.—LJ
ANASYS LICENSES IMAGING TECHNOLOGY Anasys Instruments has licensed a technology from Oak Ridge National Laboratory that combines atomic force microscopy
BUSINESS ROUNDUP
materials, solar cells, and organic transistors.
mark has now received $55 million from Sanofi.
BASF is building a specialty amines plant at its headquarters site in Ludwigshafen, Germany. The plant will have 12,000 metric tons of annual capacity when it opens in 2015.
CLARIANT is expanding its mining chemicals plant in Casablanca, Morocco, which serves the local phosphate mining industry. Additionally, the company plans to open a lab on the site that will focus on flotation and process chemicals for mining.
DOMAIN Therapeutics has received a $230,000 grant from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research to help advance mGluR3 positive allosteric modulators, which have been shown in petri dishes to have a neuroprotective effect. MJFF previously provided $300,000 in support.
MITSUBISHI Chemical is extending its 13-yearold collaboration with the University of California, Santa Barbara, by another four years through a $6 million grant to the UCSB Mitsubishi Chemical Center for Advanced Materials. The joint work currently focuses on solid-state lighting, battery
OA K R I D G E N AT I O N A L L A B O RATO RY
BUSINESS CONCENTRATES
GLENMARK Pharmaceuticals has scored a $5 million milestone payment from Sanofi as part of a 2011 pact for the development of GBR 500, a monoclonal antibody for the treatment of chronic autoimmune disorders. With this payment, Glen-
CERBIOS has begun construction of a 6,240-sq-ft R&D laboratory for chemistry and biology at its headquarters in Lugano, Switzerland. The new facility will double the chemical R&D
CEN.ACS.ORG
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Image shows heated atomic force microscope probe on a sample. Surface material is drawn as vapor into the ion source of a mass spectrometer.
with mass spectrometry. The technology allows simultaneous physical and chemical characterization of samples and could expand research in areas ranging from energy materials to drug discovery. The technology makes possible image resolutions as small as 250 nm.—MSR
CYTOS TO FOLD AFTER PHASE II FAILURE Cytos Biotechnology has initiated the process of liquidating itself following the failure of its lead product candidate, CYT003, an asthma treatment in Phase II clinical trials. Cytos, which currently has 36 employees, underwent a significant downsizing in 2011, dropping other early-stage development projects and reducing staff from 82 to 10 workers. The company’s cash balance as of March 31 was $35 million.—RM
department’s lab space for high-potency active ingredients and will double lab space for monoclonal antibody and recombinant protein research. BIO-RAD Laboratories, a Hercules, Calif.-based manufacturer of clinical diagnostics products, has acquired GnuBIO, a Cambridge, Mass., DNAsequencing-technology specialist. GnuBIO is developing an integrated diagnostic tool comprising target selection, DNA amplification, and DNA sequencing and analysis. CERTARA, a drug discovery and development software specialist, has
APRIL 21, 2014
acquired Synchrogenix Information Strategies, a provider of regulatory writing and submission services, for an undisclosed sum. Certara says the acquisition will allow the company to provide “end-to-end” support for customers, ranging from drug discovery to filing applications with FDA. ECHELON Biosciences has acquired California Peptide Research, a provider of peptides and other research chemicals. Echelon is owned by Frontier Scientific, which in 2011 acquired the Delaware-based compound management company ASDI.
