Catalyst

CW’s Billion Dollar Club, compiled by senior associate editor Kerri Walsh, offers an annual glimpse of changes at the top of the global chemical sector. BASF tops this year’s CW ranking of companies by chemical sales at $51.5 billion, taking back the title from Dow Chemical.
CW’s first edition of the Billion Dollar Club, published in 1995, featured Hoechst on top with sales of $26.9 billion (equivalent to $36.6 billion in 2006 dollars, based on changes in the U.S. consumer price index). DuPont was second, and the other members of the then German Big Three rounded out the top four: BASF and Bayer (table). Hoechst, of course, was broken up in the late 1990s. ICI, number eight in 1994, slipped to 25 in 2006, and will also fade away if Akzo Nobel’s planned acquisition succeeds.
Consolidation in the oil sector and high commodity prices have handed oil majors three spots in the top 10, compared with just one in 1994. Chemical industry consolidators such as Lyondell, which itself is about to be taken over by Basell, as well as Ineos, have jumped into the top 10 from nowhere in 1994.
Once-mighty firms such as Hoechst and ICI are giving way to new industry giants with global ambitions and reach, as well as emerging powerhouses in the Mideast and Asia/Pacific. Taiwan’s Formosa Plastics was the only chemical maker outside of the U.S., Western Europe, and Japan to crack the top 25 in 1994, but last year Sinopec (7), Sabic (11), Formosa (17), and Reliance Industries (24) stood in the top 25, and they are among the industry’s fastest growers.