Dow Chemical settles with SEC over ex-CEO's undisclosed perks
The Dow Chemical Co. has reached a settlement with the U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission following a three-year investigation that found its former
chief executive failed to disclose about $3 million in
perks.
The company agreed to pay the SEC $1.75 million and
to hire a consultant to make sure the company is complying with SEC rules
related to executive perks, according to Reuters.
Liveris stepped down as CEO in April following a multi-billion dollar merger
with DuPont. In 2017, he earned $65.7 million in compensation for his final year
with the company.
The SEC investigation, which Reuters detailed over several stories, found
Liveris used Dow aircraft for his family to use and threw
parties at the Super Bowl while Dow customers were in
attendance.
これを交際費でないとするのは、少し厳しすぎると思われる。
Dow officials said the expenses were legitimate business expenses, but added the
company has started implementing changes to improve disclosures.
September 12, 2018
Dow
Announces Investment Plans to Meet Silicones Demand Growth and Drive Innovation
Incremental debottlenecking and capacity expansion projects to meet global
demand for silicone-based solutions in targeted end-markets
The Dow Chemical Company (Dow) today
announced new low capital intensity, high return investments in its upstream
and downstream silicones franchise to accelerate innovation and support
global customers’ demand in high growth markets, such as high performance
building, home and personal care, electrical and industrial, consumer goods
and components assembly.
The investment plans include:
A series of
incremental siloxane debottleneck and
efficiency improvement projects over the next three years to further
increase capacity and efficiency in Dow’s siloxane manufacturing
facilities around the world.
A new
hydroxyl functional siloxane polymer plant in Carrollton,
Kentucky, which will increase Dow’s polymer capacity in the Americas by
65%, providing the latest technology to accelerate innovation with
customers.
Additional
expansion projects to increase capacity in Dow’s high-value performance
silicones products and intermediates. This includes a new specialty
resin plant in Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu, China, which will provide resin
intermediates for high value silicone products, including home and
personal care, pressure sensitive adhesives, antifoams, and moldable
optics for lighting.
“The projects we are announcing today
support our ability to continue to meet strong global demand for Dow’s
silicones materials, enabling us to grow and innovate more quickly with
customers and advancing our leading positions in our targeted end-markets,”
said Jim Fitterling, chief executive officer of The Dow Chemical Company and
chief operating officer for the Materials Science Division of DowDuPont.
“Further, these targeted investments are expected to deliver fast paybacks
and higher return on invested capital for Dow, contributing to greater
earnings and cash generation.”
In addition, the company also announced
the start of a feasibility study for the construction of a new, world-scale
siloxane plant. The geographic location of the new proposed siloxane
facility will be determined as an outcome of the feasibility study.
“Dow is committed to our ongoing
investment in both upstream and downstream assets to bring a reliable supply
to our customers,” said Mauro Gregorio, business president, Dow Consumer
Solutions. “As an essential addition to Dow’s global silicones manufacturing
footprint, the proposed new siloxane plant will expand our access to
differentiated monomers and intermediates around the world, while
strengthening our capabilities to accelerate and execute our strong
innovation pipeline.”
As a global leader in innovation and
silicone-based technology, Dow already operates nearly twenty silicones
manufacturing facilities globally, including three world-scale siloxane
manufacturing facilities, located in Carrollton, Kentucky, U.S.A., Barry,
Wales, United Kingdom and Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu, China.
Corteva Agriscience™ spins from
DowDuPont, becoming a standalone company June 1, 2019.
Saturday marks a historic day in the corporate world as
Corteva AgriScience, the agriculture division
of the company formerly known as DowDuPont, becomes an
independently traded company for the first time.
The separation into three companies -- Dow, DuPont and
Corteva AgriScience -- comes after the Delaware-based El du Pont de
Nemours (DuPont) and the Midland-based Dow Chemical Co. merged in August
2017.
The historic merger created a single company worth $130 billion with the
intention of then later splitting into three separate entities for each
sector of business -- agriculture, specialty products and material sciences.
"Once each division has its own processes, people, assets, systems and
licenses in place to operate independently from the parent company,
DowDuPont intends to separate the divisions to stand within their own legal
entities," a 2017 company announcement stated.
In 2018 alone, DowDuPont produced $86 billion in sales - more than any other
company in the world.
That same year the Corteva AgriScience brand was announced. The company
would be a leader in seed technologies, crop protection and digital
agriculture. However, the history of Corteva AgriScience goes back to the
early 20th century.
Dow was founded in 1897 by Herbert H. Dow and DuPont was established in 1802
by E.L. du Pont.
In 1906, Dow produced its first agricultural product and in 1928 DuPont
purchased the Grasselli Chemical Co., a manufacturer of inorganic and
organic insecticides.
Over the years the two companies changed and evolved and in 1997 Dow
acquired ownership of DowElanco, an Indianapolis-based biotech and
agribusiness company, creating Dow AgroScience.
Around the same time, DuPont acquired ownership of Pioneer, an agriculture
company established in 1926 that produced corn and soybean seeds, among
other products. And in 2011, DuPont acquired Danisco, a world-leading
company in nutrition and health industrial biosciences.
Thus, when DuPont and Dow came together in 2017, the intention was to
separate all the agricultural assets, DuPont Crop Protection, DuPont Pioneer
and Dow AgroSciences, into one standalone agriculture company.
The first separation came on April 1 of this year when
Dow became its own material science company, to be known simply as Dow or
Dow Inc.
Now, as of June 1, Corteva AgriScience and DuPont are
officially separate companies with James C. Collins Jr. as the chief
operating officer for Corteva.
While Corteva's headquarters will reside in Wilmington, Delaware, it will
retain its presence in Michigan with regional sales centers.
The emergence of Corteva comes during an unprecedented time in U.S.
agricultural history, as Collins pointed out during the Bernstein 35th
Annual Strategic Decisions Conference on May 30.
He said seed deliveries were running behind the 2018 pace due to
weather-related flooding and disruptions, as well as the cool and wet
weather throughout the country.
"The wet weather persisted in the U.S. and in fact, we are seeing the
wettest weather on record, which is still impacting the planting progress,"
he said. "As a result, we are seeing a significantly slower corn planting
progress and at this point in the season, we normally would have expected to
have corn planting in the United States essentially complete. However, the
latest data from the USDA indicates that we are only 58 percent planted."
Due to the uncertainty within the market, Corteva will not be updating its
full-year guidance at this time, Collins said.
"What we're truly experiencing here is unlike anything I've ever seen and
for that reason, we will remain firm in executing against the plans that
we've put in place and the levers that we have that are still within our
control," he said.
A May report indicates that the company will have $14.3 billion in global
net sales in 2019 and $2.7 billion in global operating earnings before
interest, tax, depreciation and amortization.
The report also shows the decrease in headcount, seed production sites,
commercial offices and R&D sites since the 2017 merger, as part of getting a
best-in-class cost structure and improved return.
Corteva AgriScience will be on the New York Stock Exchange come Monday as
CTVA.
2020.06.16
Dow and Shell team up to develop electric cracking technology
Technology could lead to lower carbon emissions, provide a path to
decarbonization as the energy grid becomes increasingly renewables-led
Dow, Inc. and Shell
today announced a joint development agreement to accelerate technology to
electrify ethylene steam crackers, which supply chemicals used to make products
that people use every day.
Today’s steam crackers rely on fossil fuel combustion
to heat their furnaces, making them CO2 intensive. As the energy grid becomes
increasingly renewables led, using renewable electricity to heat steam cracker
furnaces could become one of the routes to decarbonize the chemicals industry.
The challenge is to develop a technologically and economically feasible
solution.
The collaboration between the two companies is already underway and brings
together their complementary expertise and common commitment to a low carbon
future. Innovation project teams located in Amsterdam, Terneuzen, the
Netherlands, and Texas, U.S., are focused on designing and scaling
‘e-cracker’
technologies. They will work in the coming years to first prove out process
technology innovations in laboratory and pilot operations and to then scale to
commercial crackers.
“Continuously improving the sustainability of our operations is an inherent
part of how we operate at Dow,” said Keith Cleason, vice president Dow Olefins,
Aromatics and Alternatives business. “Significant technological breakthroughs
are needed to reduce our industry’s energy use and greenhouse gas emissions,
which will require companies to step out of their comfort zones and work
together to achieve bold and ambitious new goals. Our partnership with Shell is
an important step in making this vision a reality.”
Thomas Casparie, executive vice president of Shell’s global chemicals
business, said, “Steam cracking makes base chemicals, which are transformed into
a range of finished products that help society live, work and respond to climate
change. This new work with Dow has the potential to contribute to the reduction
of carbon emissions from the manufacture of chemicals and to Shell’s ambition of
becoming a net-zero emissions energy business by 2050 or sooner.”
New report:
Dow Freeport chemical plant leads nation in wastewater polluting
The Dow Freeport petrochemical plant in
Brazoria County was found to be the top polluter of three toxic chemicals,
causing downstream health risks to nearby communities of color and
low-income households.
The Dow
petrochemical plant in Freeport, Texas was found to be the worst
wastewater polluter in the nation, according to a new report.
That's one
of the findings of the Environmental Integrity Project's (EIP) latest
study entitled,
"Plastic's Toxic River," which
was released Thursday afternoon.
The
report, which looks into data from 2021 to 2023, found that dozens of
petrochemical plants — factories that use oil and gas to make plastics,
industrial chemicals and pesticides — have been breaking federal
regulations without substantial, if any, repercussions.
Among the
70 petrochemical plants the EIP reported on, 58 were found to have
violated at least one wastewater regulation. Only eight plants have been
penalized, with the average fine being $266.
Krisen Schlemmer,
a senior legal director at Bayou City Waterkeeper, a Houston-based
environmental protection nonprofit, emphasized in a webinar that when it
comes to violating wastewater regulations, "some of the worst actors are
here in our backyard in Texas."
Among the
plants that have violated the Clean Waters Act, 28 are in Texas, leaving
only two plants in the state that have not broken federal wastewater
regulations.
Local
environmental experts and the report's authors point to the
Environmental Protection Agency's lax regulations for why plants have
continued to dump dangerous — and at high amounts lethal — chemicals
into waterways.
Jen
Duggan, the EIP’s executive director, said it’s communities of color and
low-income households that are the most at risk.
"The
unchecked pollution from these plants hurts peoples' livelihoods and
quality of life, it puts our health at risk," Duggan said. "It puts our
health at risk, and it shifts the cost of cleaning up this pollution to
communities instead of the companies who are creating it.”
The Dow
plant in Brazoria County was the report's top wastewater polluter of
three toxic chemicals: dioxin, nitrogen and phosphorus, and dioxin.
Dioxin is
a potent and toxic chemical that has been linked to cancer, reproductive
and developmental problems, hormone imbalances and weakened immune
systems. Just one drop of dioxin is enough to contaminate 44 swimming
pools, according to the EPA.
Yet,
there aren't federal limits to the amount of dioxins plastics and
chemical plants can release into waterways.
The Dow
Freeport plant released more than 800 grams of
dioxins into the Brazos River in 2022.
Additionally, according to the report, in 2023 it released
more than 3.3 million pounds of nitrogen
and nearly 700,000 pounds of phosphorus into the
river.
Schlemmer
said both chemicals "degrade water quality, making it difficult for life
to survive in the water. Yet, these are exactly the things that the Dows
Freeport facility was found to have discharged into the Brazos River,
which is upstream from popular fishing spots as well as a surfside
beach."
To
encourage tougher regulations over petrochemical plants, the report's
authors made five recommendations to protect communities and wildlife:
Require
the use of modern wastewater pollution tracking technology
Prohibit
dumping plastic pellets into waterways
Update
and improve monitoring requirements in permit applications and
permits
Increase
enforcement of Clean Water Act permit violations and impose
penalties
U.S. chemical giant Dow Inc. has paused
construction of a $9 billion net-zero petrochemical project in Canada,
citing weak market conditions.
Formerly known as the “Dow Chemical
Company,” the Michigan-based concern is one of the three largest
chemical producers in the world. It previously committed to build the “Path2Zero
project” in the western Canadian province of Alberta, which is
the center of Canada’s oil and gas industry.
However, after a “comprehensive
review,” Dow says that it has decided to push back the timeline for the
project. No new timeline for its completion has been announced.
Management at Dow says it is adjusting to what is sees as a
“lower-for-longer earnings environment” in coming quarters due to
macro-economic and market uncertainty caused by U.S. trade tariffs.
As such, management at Dow says they
won’t need the Canadian project’s output as early as thought and will
pause construction on the petrochemical plant until market conditions
improve. The delay means that Dow won’t be spending $1 billion in Canada
this year.
The project was expected to create
5,000 jobs in Alberta during the construction phase and about 450
full-time jobs once the plant was operational. Dow previously said that
the massive Canadian project would be the world’s first net-zero
greenhouse gas emission petrochemical plant.