Great Lakes Chemical Corporation - Company Profile, Information, Business Description, ... - 0 views
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In 1946 Charles Hale, a geologist and Wall Street financier, became the largest shareholder of the McClanahan Oil Company and later assumed its presidency. As part of his goal to create a natural resources conglomerate, Hale engineered the company's acquisition of the Great Lakes Chemical Corporation in March of 1948. Great Lakes Chemical held titles to oil and gas reserves, as well as some bromine wells near Filer City, Michigan. In May of 1950 the two companies merged to form the Great Lakes Oil & Chemical Company.
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Great Lakes Chemical had become highly profitable, taking advantage of higher demand and new applications for bromine. The company nearly doubled its brine reserves near El Dorado, Arkansas, when it purchased the bromine operations of Northwest Industries' Velsicol subsidiary in 1981. In doing so, Great Lakes Chemical prevented competitors like Dow and Ethyl from increasing their bromine assets. The Federal Trade Commission, however, filed suit to prevent the takeover on antitrust grounds. After several years of litigation the matter was finally settled in March of 1984, when the FTC agreed to permit the takeover on the condition that Great Lakes would license its technologies to PPG Industries, in order to make it a "viable competitor."
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Earl T. McBee, a professor of industrial chemistry at Purdue University and a consultant to Great Lakes since 1953, advocated the company's gradual withdrawal from the petroleum industry, favoring instead the expansion of its bromine operation. Charles Hale agreed with McBee and in 1957 authorized the sale of the company's oil properties in California. Through the sale of additional California real estate during 1960, Great Lakes raised enough capital to purchase a 50 percent share of Arkansas Chemicals Inc., which owned several bromine-rich brine wells in Arkansas. As a result, Great Lakes became a major bromine products company by gaining a stake in the best deposits before the industry leader Dow Chemical could do so.