BUSINESS
EVONIK DEBUTS RAG?s corporate IDENTITY CHANGE means the demise of the Degussa name SO FARE THEE WELL Degussa, and wel come Evonik Industries. Evonik is the new name adopted this month by RAG, a German conglomerate formed in the 1950s to take over the coun try's mining interests. In the intervening years, the company expanded its portfolio to include energy generation; real estate; and, since late 2006 through its ownership of Degussa, chemicals. Then, in a political settlement reached earlier this year, RAG transferred its mining operations into a stand-alone foundation. That move opened the way for RAG to pre pare for a stock market launch next spring. Now the company has what its manag ers see as a coherent identity under the umbrella of a new name: Evonik Energy; Evonik Real Estate; and as the renamed De gussa will be known, Evonik Chemicals. According to Werner Muller, the chief executive who has driven RAG's reshaping, "Evonik is Germany's creative industrial group for chemicals, energy, and real es tate. Our goal is to become one of the most creative industrial groups in the world." Evonik, he reported, has achieved an im pressive track record during four years of re structuring, significantly increasing its oper
BEST
ating performance. Over those years, Evonik has divested some 480 companies with sales of nearly $11 billion and 35,000 employees, while acquiring Degussa, which now accounts for al most 80% of its sales. In 2006, Evonik's 43,000 employees worldwide generated sales of roughly $20 billion and operating profits of $1.6 billion. In the first half of this year, sales rose 3%, while operating earnings increased 26%. The new Evonik brand, which also includes a new corporate color, deep pur ple, will be launched in the coming weeks and months. Muller Previous corporate brands such as Degussa in chemicals, Steag in coal and energy, and RAG Immobilien in real estate will be phased out. One reason for Evonik's rebranding is that it is easier for a company to build and promote a single, cohesive corporate name than it is to support a clutch of disparate identities. But the renaming is also an op portunity for the company to leave behind
Degussa's unsavory World War II history. Degussa played a pivotal role in the processing of plundered precious metals in Nazi-occupied Europe. It also controlled the production and distribution of the cyanide fumigant Zyklon B, used to gas the inmates of the Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camps, Peter Hayes points out in his 2004 book "From Cooperation to Complicity." Degussa's board of directors decided in 1997 to open its archives and books to < Hayes, a professor of history « and German and Theodore 2 Z. Weiss Professor of Holoa
caust Studies at Northwest ern University, for a study of Degussa and the Third Reich. The company was embroiled in controversy at the time over restitution payments to Holocaust survivors, and its managers were trying to make amends for actions by their predecessors nearly 70 years earlier. Many of their overtures had begun to win Degus sa—by that time bearing little connection with the wartime com pany—grudging respect. The sentiment was not universal, however, and it was clear that Degussa, founded in the 1860s, would never escape the taint of its past. Thus, few tears will be shed as the company name—a German acronym for the German Gold 8c Silver Separation Institute—slips quietly into oblivion.—PATRICIA SHORT
PRACTICES
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SEPTEMBER 24, 2007
R E Q U E S T MORE AT A D I N F O N O W . O R G
Using Best Practices Helps Organizations to Satisfy Regulatory Requirements and Pass Workplace Chemical Audits
