On Wednesday, Dow Chemical announced plans to close down three of their plants. All three of the closing plants are in the state of Louisiana.

The good news for workers at these three plants is that they will be offered jobs elsewhere within Dow Chemical. Approximately 100 people work at the three plants.

Dow Chemical says they are making the change to focus more on specialty chemicals rather than basic chemicals. This change in focus started when they purchased Rohm & Haas a few months ago in a transaction that cost $16 billion.

Said Andrew N. Liveris, the CEO of Dow Chemical: “Consistent with Dow’s practice of active portfolio management, we continue to take quick and aggressive action to right-size our manufacturing footprint, particularly in our basics portfolio. These actions are also aligned with our strategic transformation, which focuses on preferentially investing for growth in our performance and advanced materials portfolios. In addition, we are making excellent progress on achieving $1.3 billion in cost synergies from the acquisition, and today’s steps demonstrate our speed and determination to deliver these savings.”

On Wednesday, Dow Chemical’s fell about one percent.

Dow Chemical (Image: Flickr)

Dow Chemical Co. agreed on Monday to go through with the purchase of Rohm and Haas Co. The two companies had been set to go to trial over Dow’s refusal to make the deal that they had agreed to many months ago.

Rohm & Haas shareholders will receive $78 per share plus a small ticking fee agreed upon in their original deal. Last summer Dow had agreed to buy Rohm but then balked at closing the takeover after their plastics joint venture ($17.4 billion) fell apart. In January, Rohm sued Dow for not proceeding.

Logo: Courtesy of Dow

Under the terms of the transaction, the two biggest shareholders (Haas Family Trusts and Paulson & Co.) will take $2.5 billion of the money owed to them in preferred equity. Additionally, another $500 million will be paid to Haas trusts.

Source: Wire Reports

Graeme Neill, who blogs for UK-based theBookseller.com has a post today called: Author Sinha in hunger strike

The story is about Idera Sinha, author of novels the Animal’s People and The Death of Mr.Love, who began a hunger strike on 10th June in an attempt to bring American industrial company Dow Chemical to court in India to face criminal and civil charges relating to the tragedy because of a major chemical spill by that company in Bhopal, India back in 1984.

Arghhh… I’d forgotten all about the spill caused by an American company and might have assumed, if asked, that somehow the victims had been compensated and the mess cleaned up. But no… not much has been done. And tragically I’m not surprised, really.

Our country’s massive greediness is, in my opinion, appalling. Of course, we also do a whole bunch of wonderful stuff. Sigh.

When I first saw the headline, however, I wondered what, if anything I’d go on a hunger strike for?

How about you? What might move you to perform a hunger strike?

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