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Business

Business Roundup

March 28, 2016 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 94, Issue 13

Nexeo Solutions, which calls itself the largest U.S. plastics distributor, is being sold by TPG to an affiliate of the private equity firm WL Ross & Co. for $1.6 billion. TPG, also a private equity firm, acquired Nexeo from Ashland in 2011 for $979 million.

IHS is merging with the financial information provider Markit in a transaction worth about $13 billion. IHS, based in Englewood, Colo., is the largest supplier of market research for the chemical industry. In 2011, it purchased Chemical Market Associates Inc. (CMAI), which was renamed IHS Chemical.

Novacap, a French chemical maker, is in the process of being sold by its majority owner, the investment company Ardian, to Eurazeo and Mérieux Développement, two European investment firms. Novacap is a former Rhodia business that employs about 1,600 people.

Invista is set to expand the production of aromatic polyester polyols at its site in Vlissingen, the Netherlands. Additional capacity at the site will be used to supply markets in Europe.

Ascend Performance Materials has completed the first full-scale production run of its Hexatran trifunctional amines at its plant in Decatur, Ala. The amines are additives intended to boost the performance of asphalt as well as epoxy and isocyanate polymers.

Anellotech, which is developing a catalytic process to make aromatic chemicals out of biomass, has gotten $3 million in funding from an unnamed equity investor. The same investor put $7 million into the Pearl River, N.Y.-based firm late last year.

Topas Therapeutics, a biotech firm developing nanoparticle-based drugs for immunological diseases, has been spun off of the contract research firm Evotec. Topas launches with nearly $16 million in funding. Topas’s technology stems from Bionamics, a firm acquired by Evotec in 2014.

PTC Therapeutics will reduce its workforce by about 18% in response to FDA’s recent refusal to consider the firm’s New Drug Application for ataluren for the treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. PTC, based in South Plainfield, N.J., has about 320 employees.

Zymergen will work with Arzeda to develop microbial routes to molecules and materials that can’t be synthesized using conventional chemistry. Arzeda will provide software for protein and enzymatic pathway design, while Zymergen will develop and test the strains.

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