Chemical Industry Weekly News Round-Up, Jan. 21

This Week on CW:

Cargill is divesting its majority stake in Mosaic for $24.3 billion, in a deal giving rise to rumors of fertilizer being a takeover target.

Early reporting chemical companies, including PPG and Fuller, saw mixed earnings results.

Brenntag's private equity owner is divesting yet another stake in the company, this one worth some $680 million.

GE and Shenhua have announced a joint venture to establish a full-fledged coal gasification business in China.

President Obama has issued an executive order for a review of all U.S. federal regulation, to weed out bad or unnecessary rules.

Around the Web:

Think Obama's executive order will streamline regulations? Think again, says the New York Times. Every president since Carter has ordered something similar and, it turns out, there are far fewer bad rules than you'd think – and most of those are pretty inconsequential.

I'm in the mood to take on right-wing shibboleths this week: Inc has a fascinating look at entrepreneurs in Norway, a "socialist" (it's really social democratic, but who's keeping track?) country with higher rates of entrepreneurship than the U.S.

A new study predicts that climate change will happen even faster than previously thought (which, of course, is faster than we thought five or ten years ago), in the Telegraph.

Ratings agency Standard & Poor's says that California's cap-and-trade program could hurt refiners in that state, Bloomberg reports.