Clean

Chapter 7ACQUISITIONS: SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH ADDITION

According to most studies, between 70 and 90 percent of acquisitions fail. Most explanations for this depressing number emphasize problems with integrating the two parties involved.

—Graham Kenny¹

Sodium aluminate seemed destined to be an orphan. Some of America's early twentieth-century business titans knew this chemical could be the next big thing in an industrializing country; however, realizing it would never be central to what they did, they passed on building a new market. That job fell to two entrepreneurs. Herb Kern, a 30-year-old chemical engineer from Lake Elmo, Minnesota, founded the Chicago Chemical Company in 1920. Kern's introduction to sodium aluminate came from a war colleague, Frederick Salathe, who had discovered the compound's superior properties in softening water while working for Standard Oil of Indiana (#14 on Forbes list of largest companies in 1917). Standard granted Salathe rights to the chemical because its core business, pumping and refining oil, had little overlap with cleaning water.² At the same time, Wilson P. Evans noticed the value of sodium aluminate in cleaning the boilers of his employer, the Armour Meat company (#3 on that Forbes list). Like Standard Oil, Armour had little interest in moving into industrial chemicals and ceded commercial rights to Evans. A few Armour executives saw the overall potential and took stock in Evans's new company, the Aluminate Sales Corporation, when it ...