Iranian anger at Basell sale

Executives at Iran’s National Petrochemical Company (NPC) are blaming American pressure for their failure to land the world’s biggest polypropylene producer, Basell. BASF and Shell, joint owners of Basell, sold the company to a consortium of American-based and Indian investors for €4.4billion.

NPC’s managing director, Mohammed Reza Nemetzadeh, told the student news agency ISNA in Teheran that NPC had won the bidding war for Basell, but ‘due to US pressures we are unofficially told Iran cannot buy NPC.’ Under American law, Iranian companies are not allowed to hold assets in the US, and although NPC reportedly offered to split off Basell’s US interests, the Reuters news agency reports that Washington was concerned about how Basell’s technology might be used.

Basell’s buyers are Access Industries, a US-based investment company headed by Len Blavatnik, a Russian billionaire, who founded the company in 1986; and the Chatterjee Group, another US-based investment organisation with large holdings in India, including a controlling interest in Haldia Petrochemicals.

Blavatnik, a naturalised American citizen, made his money by buying up privatised Russian companies; Access owns a quarter of the third-largest Russian oil company, TNK-BP, and half of its largest aluminium maker, SUAL.

‘We are experienced in industrial investments in companies that compete in large, cyclical markets, and I believe Basell is an attractively positioned global business with an excellent future,’ Blavatnik said. ‘I am very impressed by Basell’s track record, and by the company’s highly professional and motivated management and workforce.

Chatterjee is headed by Purnendu Chatterjee, a former management consultant with McKinsey who took his first steps in corporate finance with George Soros. He founded the Chatterjee Group, based in New York, as an affiliate of Soros Fund Management, and has also invested in software development companies in India and the US. Haldia Petrochemical, one of India’s largest chemical operations, uses Basell technology at two of its plants.

‘We look forward to consolidating Basell’s global leadership position through enhanced commitments in technology,’ Chatterjee commented.