Ciba Specialty Chemicals

The Ciba AG (formerly Ciba Specialty Chemicals Inc. (1996 ), Ciba Specialty Chemicals Inc. ( 1996-2007 ); former parent company Ciba Holding AG ) headquartered in Basel was an internationally active Swiss companies in the field of value chemical specialties, mainly for industrial applications in the areas of automotive, construction, mining and oil, cosmetics, agriculture, materials for the electronics industry, monomers and water-soluble polymers, paper industry, detergents, lubricants and water treatment.

2008 Ciba was taken over by the German chemical company BASF and incorporated in April 2009 in the BASF Group. The Ciba AG entered the market initially continued under the old name on, but was then in March 2010 renamed BASF AG Switzerland.

In its last fiscal year as a separate group under the umbrella of Ciba Holding, the group counted 2007, around 13,300 employees in 60 facilities in 20 countries and 22 research centers in twelve countries. 2007, the Group achieved a turnover of around 6.523 billion Swiss francs in the three business segments Plastic Additives, Coating Effects and Water & Paper Treatment.

History

CIBA was founded in 1997 under the name of Ciba Specialty Chemicals as a spin-off of the chemicals division of Novartis, which had emerged a year earlier from the merger of Sandoz and Ciba- Geigy Company. The following year, the British company Allied Colloids was integrated into the Ciba Specialty Chemicals, from the new business was water treatment. In 2000, Ciba Specialty Chemicals sold the Performance Polymers division of Huntsman with the objective of being able to concentrate more on the quality of specialty chemicals. In August 2000, Ciba Specialty Chemicals listed first on the New York Stock Exchange ( NYSE: CSB). 2004, the Finnish Raisio Chemicals was bought and CIBA Specialty Chemicals thereby became one of the leading supplier of chemicals for the paper industry. In 2006, Ciba sold the business unit " masterbatches " Clariant International and the business unit " Textile Effects " on the American Huntsman group. A year later, CIBA emphasized the term " Specialty Chemicals " from the company name, and called himself only Ciba. 2008, the change of CEO Armin Meyer Brendan Cummins. In November of the same year, BASF received by way of a public tender offer nearly 95 % of Ciba shares The acquisition by BASF was completed on 9 April 2009 and it began the integration of Ciba into BASF. On June 23, 2009 then, the General Assembly approved the merger agreement and declared the Ciba Holding shares so canceled. With the entry of the merger in the commercial register Ciba Holding AG ended as the parent company of the Ciba group.

Acquisition by BASF

On 15 September 2008, BASF announced a public offer to acquire Ciba for a total price of 6.1 billion Swiss francs. The acquisition was subject to the approval of the shareholders of Ciba, a minimum acceptance rate of 66.67 % and approval by the relevant competition authorities. Under this procedure, the BASF were up to the end of the grace tendered 53,376,268 shares. Including Ciba shares that held BASF prior to publication of the appointment, of Ciba shares acquired by BASF outside the public offering of the Spanish investor group Bestinver and held by Ciba even own shares, the participation of BASF was the end of November 2008 for a total of 65,328,153 Ciba shares. This corresponds to 94.59 percent of the issued Ciba shares. After meeting the requirements of several antitrust authorities, among others from the U.S. and China, BASF completed the acquisition on April 9, 2009.

In a statement issued on 6 July 2009 press release by BASF, the company announced a total of 23 of the 55 former Ciba production sites to sell or want to close, as well as the merging of more than half of the 70 sales offices and research sites. As a result of the restructuring of the Group 3700 jobs will continue to be degraded.

As of March 1, 2010, BASF merged their two groups of companies based in Switzerland, Ciba AG and BASF AG Switzerland and formed the new BASF AG, based in Basel, Switzerland, formerly Wädenswil.

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