Lanxess confirms talks to sell stake in rubber unit
13 Feb 2015
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Cologne, Germany - Lanxess AG is in talks with potential partners for its synthetic rubber business, the company has confirmed to ERJ.
Lanxess has two rubber business units; High Performance Elastomers and Tire And Specialty Rubbers. These are positioned within the group’s Performance Polymer segment, which generated an estimated €4.5 billion in sales in 2013.
“Performance Polymer segment consists a number of business units and there are talks for partnership [across] the entire rubber business,” a Lanxess spokeswoman explained.
On 9 Feb, Bloomberg cited unidentified sources as suggesting that two proposals have been submitted, and that Saudi Aramco was among the negotiating parties.
However, the Lanxess representative refused to confirm the names of negotiating parties to ERJ.
“The issue of talks is not something new, our CEO mentioned it last year,” said the spokeswoman adding that options were being considered at the moment.
CEO Matthias Zachert said in May 2014 that he would not rule out setting up joint ventures with strategic partners to tackle production overcapacity and weak prices in the synthetic rubber industry.
According to the spokeswoman, the partnerships could be “in horizontal or vertical cooperation”. She did not further elaborate on the details.
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