Journal of Business Chemistry September 2008

Dark clouds are gathering over global markets: The mortgage crisis in the USA and the high-flying prices for oil and other natural resources like steel or aluminium force the threat of a regression in European and North American countries. Did the motor of the world economy get too hot? Believing the predictions of experts and […]

The registration, evaluation and authorisation of chemical substances in the context of the European regulation called REACh influence the profit of the chemical industry. If the chemical enterprises want to keep their competitiveness and the availability of products in the European market they have to pursue a REACh-strategy. By using a value based portfolio management […]

The chemical industry has been hamperedby poor forecasting for years. There are manyreasons why this industry has lagged behindother industries in its adoption of advancedforecasting techniques, but a key reason is thatthe supply chain has been largely based uponpetro-chemical feedstocks in a push-drivenmode. Historically, large quantities of bulk pro-duct were manufactured and then pushed intothe […]

Companies in many segments of the chemical industry – particularly in the more commoditized segments – are highly exposed to the business cycle. In other words, their businesses tend to be quite profitable at the peak but margins are low or even negative in downturns of the business cycle. Throughout the article, this phenomenon will […]

Introduction More than 8 months ago (on 15 January 2008) the European Commission (“Commission“) launched a sector inquiry into the pharmaceutical sector relating to the introduction of innovative and generic medicines for human consumption onto the market. The Commission believes that there are some indications of commercial practices by pharmaceutical undertakings intended to restrict competition […]