Executing a deal such as Dow Chemical Co.'s
$18.8 billion cash purchase of Rohm and Haas Co., announced Thursday morning, involves a big cast of characters. At the top of the list, of course, are the two CEOs: Dow's Andrew Liveris and Rohm and Haas' Raj L. Gupta.
But two people who were no doubt right at the center of things were the corporate development execs on each side of the deal -- both of whom we've gotten to know here at Corporate Dealmaker in the course of reporting past articles. This seems like a good time to spotlight them again.
On the Dow side is Randy Croyle (pictured left), director of Dow's mergers and acquisitions expertise center. Croyle, who is also a member of the Corporate Dealmaker advisory board, has been with Dow since 1973 in a variety of roles, including manufacturing and engineering. In 1999 he became director of the program management office that developed and managed the integration plan for Union Carbide, Dow's biggest acquisition until the Rohm and Haas deal.
That program management office evolved into the current M&A expertise center. In recent years, as I reported in a 2006 CD cover story, Croyle and his relatively small team have put a lot of effort into executing Dow's many
joint ventures, such as the $11 billion venture
Dow formed with a subsidiary of Kuwait Petroleum Corp. in March.
The dominant theme in these ventures has been to position Dow's commodity businesses closer to the hydrocarbons on which they depend. The JVs are the other side of the coin from the Rohm and Haas acquisition, which moves Dow deeper into specialty chemicals and advanced materials.
On the Rohm and Haas side is Tom Macphee (right), vice president and director of corporate strategic planning and M&A. He joined Rohm and Haas in 1978 as a process chemist and, like Croyle, has had a variety of jobs at the company. He joined the corporate strategic planning group in 1995 and became director of it in 1999. And here's an interesting part of his portfolio, in light of the strategic rationale for the current deal: He has responsibility for Rohm and Haas'
advanced materials and other emerging businesses, both internal and external.
I spoke with Macphee for our June cover story on how acquirers
arrive at valuations for their acquisition targets.
If the two resumes look similar, that's probably no accident. Like the pharma industry, the chemical industry has a long history of dealmaking, and deep industry expertise is important to making deals work.
The transactional track records of both sides probably bode well for the success of this deal. So, perhaps, does the
financial backing of the Kuwait Investment Authority, which is likely well acquainted with Dow's several major deals with Kuwaiti entities, and of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., an outfit that knows something about deals. -
Kenneth Klee
Join Corporate Dealmaker's LinkedIn forum
Juergen Lasowski
And the winners are...
