Through a research period of four months, Eventful Conferences has conducted extensive interviews with 50+ chemical industry companies, and held two roundtable events in key chemical industry locations – Philadelphia, PA and Houston, TX. The intention of the research is to summarize the most common and critical challenges that the industry must address – crucial to their success. These pain points have been identified by the industry during the roundtables and throughout the interviews. The Best Practices for Chemicals Conference will strive to address each challenge, pain point and trend by providing solution-oriented presentations, backed by specific evidence and packaged to provide the audience with clear takeaways on how to achieve similar results.
We will elaborate more about these challenges and paint points in a blog series which starts today.
1. Mergers, Acquisitions & Divestitures
The chemical industry is on pace to set an all-time record on mergers, acquisitions and divestitures in 2016, highlighted by four mega-mergers (Dow/Dupont, ChemChina/Syngenta, Valspar/SherwinWilliams, AirGas/AirLiquide, and possibly a fifth, Bayer/Monsanto). With research and development no longer providing blockbuster chemical innovation, the industry now relies on mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures to fuel future growth and change through synergies and inherited technologies and portfolios. This has become the new norm for this industry, and the landscape has forever changed.
To gain a good competitive advantage in a merger/acquisition/divestiture situation, companies must do them well – quickly and without significant disruption. Expectations of cost-savings, synergies and growth are dictated by private equity companies (the new owners) and by new management. This is not easy – the process of merging, acquiring, and/or divesting takes a significant amount of resources – many human – that are already allocated to running the business as is. As a result, these transactions are a time of high stress, uncertainty, and worthy of attention as noted by the interviewees.
- What can my finance tools provide to help me make merger/acquisition/divestiture decisions?
- How can I plan and allocate resources to make my merger/acquisition/divestiture go smoothly?
- How can I ensure that both businesses in the transaction run without major disruptions or losses?
- What are some best practices for integrating the systems of two companies? And how can I plan or map the technology needs of this transaction?
- What can I do to make future transactions easier on my company?
- How can SAP help me meet the regulatory requirements of a merger/acquisition/divestiture?
To get answers to these and many more questions join us at the Best Practices for Chemicals Conference, being held in Houston on April 4-6, 2017!
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