One thing Christopher Pappas, president and CEO of Berwyn’s materials giant Trinseo, wanted to achieve after separating from Dow Chemical eight years ago was to forge a new company culture, writes Jane Von Bergen for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
At that time, Dow Chemical grouped four of its separate businesses under the name Styron, which was then sold to private equity fund Bain Capital Partners. Styron changed its name in 2014 to Trinseo, before becoming a publicly traded company.
The company then hired 600 new people, some of which replaced Dow Chemical employees who had left the new company voluntarily.
“We didn’t lay anybody off,” said Pappas. “We went through a process where we had to reconfigure the company, and we had a lot of people who left. They didn’t like the environment of working for private equity.”
The departure from the parent company was not easy for some employees, but Pappas made sure to focus on finding new ideas and moving forward with them.
“Within six months of the close of our transaction with Bain, we got approval to make a major investment, $140 million, in the rubber business,” said Pappas.
Read the entire interview with Trinseo CEO Christopher Pappas in the Philadelphia Inquirer here, and check out previous VISTA Today coverage of Trinseo here.
