Dow Chemical Case Question 1 Polyethylene is the world’s most widely used plastic. Polyethylene plastic’s principal application was in packaging, from trash bags to milk jugs. It was widely used in the manufacture of everything from trash bags, picnic cutlery and garbage pails, to plastic toys. Polyethylene also replaced glass, wood, and metal in certain applications. There were three types of polyethylene, Low-density polyethylene, High density polyethylene and Low linear density polyethylene. Polyethylene produced from ethylene. Ethylene is produced from oil or natural gas. Ethylene plants separated either naphtha molecules (derived from crude oil) or ethane molecules (derived from natural gas). The ethylene derived from this …show more content…
The expansion of its polyethylene capacity in Bahia Blanca would require the company to build a world-class competitive cracker (stage 3). Doing so would nearly triple PBB’s ethylene capacity. Therefore, Dow had to not only consider what to bid for PBB in the privatization, but also develop an overall plan for the development of Dow’s polyethylene business. Dow had to incorporate the terminal value of each stage of the project. Question 3: The followings are the arguments that support the acquisition of PBB: 1. The whole project will increase Dow shareholder’s wealth. As a public company, the first aim of the management team is to increase the shareholder wealth. The project proposed by the management team is definitely consistent with this goal. And bidding on the PBB is the first stage of the whole project. The exact increase in shareholders’ equity may be various at this point as it depends on lots of other factors ( we will discuss the risk of valuation thought the whole case.), but in general, the management team is confident in the future outlook. 2. The other important strategic purpose of acquiring PBB is that it is the first stage towards consolidating all Bahia Blanca’s polyethylene activity under Dow’s control. The 3-stage project will make Dow to be the leading company of polyethylene in Argentina, even in Latin America because of its MNC background. This will have
Pibrex, a European leader in the production and development of polymers, faces the loss of its three Russian subsidiaries. This threat stems from issues encountered after entering the region in 1992 and then being hit with the Russian financial crisis of August 1998. As result, a steering committee comprised of three senior managers from Pibrex Region Europe North (PREN) exercised many anti-crisis initiatives including assigning newly appointed financial controller Elena Michailova with the task of auditing all three Pibrex Russian subsidiaries.
This case study describes what happens when a health district merges four laboratories into one unit due to external driving forces for change, primarily the government funding cuts. Although the intention was to develop one centralized, efficient, and high volume centre, the inattention to the ‘people issues’ and the cultural differences of the work units results in chaos. The recently hired laboratory manager, Claude, has implemented several stopgap measures intended to address the work load issues resulting from high turnover levels and sick leave usage. However, these measures do not improve the morale and performance problems of the laboratory. Time is running out for Claude as his supervisor gives him an ultimatum to ‘clean house
As long-term valuation is assumed, risk free rate is set as 30-year treasury rate, 5.73%. Cost of debt is 6.72% reflecting Amoco’s credit level. Cost of equity is calculated as 10.63%, leading to final WACC at 8.85% (Chart 1).
In July 2005 the price of shares in Boral Limited was $5.964 and has fluctuated to a high of $8.519 in May 2006 (pre-GFC) and is currently trading at around $5.902. The result of this would have been negative if we just take the price without taking into account any dividends as the stock has stagnated. More importantly the stock has not even kept up with inflation and if bought in 2005 would have lost approximately 20% of its value as due to the effects of inflation in the last 10 years. Dividends have been paid each year but have decreased significantly from a high in 2006 to today (Boral Limited, 2015).
The case study on Pacific Oil Company shows from beginning to end the role of power in the outcome of a negotiation. From the beginning, the problem that Pacific Oil Company faced as it reopened negotiations with Reliant Chemical Company was that they did not assert the power necessary to really end up with the outcome of the negotiation they were hoping for. The case study points out several factors that Pacific Oil Company is trying to achieve in the contract negotiations with Reliant Chemical company: the change to a surplus of VCM in the market, the possibility of Pacific Oil needing a supply of their own of VCM to produce their own PVC, and the start-up of several other companies in the production of VCM (Lewiski, n.d.). These
Polypropylene inherent properties of high firmness, great elasticity and inactivity toward acids, antacids and solvents has secured its position in an extensive variety of shopper and mechanical items (Kawasumi et al., 1997). The density of PP is between 0.895 and 0.92 g/cm³. Therefore, PP is the commodity plastic with the lowest density. With lower density, moldings parts with lower weight and more parts of a certain mass of plastic can be produced. Unlike polyethylene, crystalline and amorphous regions differ only slightly in their density. However, the density of polyethylene can significantly change with fillers (Tripathi, 2001). Polypropylene are likewise adaptable and can have high stretching before breaking. Polypropylene is also the
Polyethylene industry is considered as highly capital intensive since it requires large plant size to sustain the enormous production capacity and so as to fulfill the huge demand of the industry. Therefore, in order to be competitive and successful in this industry, the need for economies of scale is vital, since it contributes to greater revenues and sales volume of the company with a great proportion of saving in the costs. Also, the industry’s profitability is highly correlated to the company’s operating rate, which also refers to the capacity utilization rate of the company. The higher the percentage of the company’s total capacity is being used, the higher profit margins are accompanied by. However, notice that an excessive operating rate that over-utilizes the company’s available resources would lead to an oversupply of the production in the industry, which pulls down polyethylene’s market price and deteriorates the company’s
Polyethylene is a thermoplastic polymer consisting of long chains of the monomer ethylene and is abbreviated as PE. Polyethylene consists of the two chemical elements hydrogen and carbon. PE is created through the polymerization of ethene and is classified into several categories based primarily on its density and branching of its molecular structure and weight.
BP has spent over a century building and expanding its organization. It has been successful creating a very diverse portfolio to increase revenue. Instead of just relying on the energy sector for earnings, it has other avenues such as retail stores, credit cards, and lubricants to keep the money rolling in. Just as its product offerings are diverse, so are its geographical locations. Being located in multiple countries across the world allows BP to spread its risk over a greater area, and maintain substantial profits. Even when one or more areas are taking a hit financially, businesses in other areas are able to continue generating income. The company’s transparency has been another major strength that has gotten it through some rough times. BP has had some major accidents throughout the duration of its existence, which have caused some major blows to its image. However, regardless of how bad the outcome was, the corporation has become increasingly transparent with the details of the damage sustained, the issues that caused them, and what would be done to rectify the situations.
An understanding of what plastic is made of, and where it came from is essential to fully understand the impact of plastic in history. The word plastic originally meant pliable and easily shaped, but today the word plastic refers a man made polymer which used in everyday life ("All-History-of-Plastics | Chemical Heritage Foundation"). Polymers long repeating chains of molecules. The shape of polymers can give plastics the ability to mold into many different shapes. The reason for this is because the individual strands of polymers just slide past each other ("A Brief History of Plastics, Natural and
1. The Enron debacle created what one public official reported was a “crisis of confidence” on the part of the public in the accounting profession. List the parties who you believe are most responsible for that crisis. Briefly justify each of your choices.
From Q6, all regressions models ran by Single Index Model, a model helps to split a security’s total risk into unique risk and market risk, α is the intercept of the single index model in which evaluate the expected excess return of the security , and β is the security’s sensitivity to the market index, while e represents the unsystematic risk of the security:
The purpose of this plan is to persuade the executive branch of BP to capitalize on a new gap in demand for biofuels and in the process establish a foothold in the Cuban market.
Plastics and petroleum are essential for modern society and we often rely on it to make our lives easier. Petroleum is the key resource for every human, it starts out as oil that comes out of the ground and its a key ingredients for our cars since most factories need it in order to convert it to fuel. Without petroleum, plastics would not exist since plastic made of many carbon molecules that are polymers. Plastics were essential a product that were supposed to replace other materials and people often called it polymer, which most people see as hard plastics that had the properties of being lightweight and strong. In the early 20th century plastics was relatively a new material and there were not a lot of companies producing it, but during World War II, the demand for them increased since its properties were very useful from the production of weapons to vehicles such as plane parts. After the war had ended, society wanted more of this new material and eventually the creation of the plastic bag helped many customers hold multiple items without breaking. Microbeads came from plastics as it was in form of a small spheres that, companies that created toothpaste, shaving cream, or shower gel, began to replace the natural elements in the ingredients with microbeads since they were cheaper to produce than the making the natural part, but in the early 2000, people began to realize the harmful
Plastic bags have been around for ages now and have a multitude of different uses. Since the 1960's, people of all ages have been using these multi-purpose bags for a variety of purposes including shopping, carrying personal items and for dumping garbage (Sugii, 2008). Plastic bags are mostly single-use items which consumers can dispose off once used and took the world by storm once introduced, replacing the popular paper bags.