Chemical giant’s CEO is making way for new Dow leader
Andrew Liveris is leaving DowDuPont after a career spanning four decades, clearing the way for Jim Fitterling to take the reins of Dow when it’s spun off as an independent company next year.
Liveris, 63, will relinquish the chairman’s title on April 1 and leave the the board as previously planned on July 1, DowDuPont said in a statement Monday. Fitterling was appointed to be chief executive officer of the materials company, which will reclaim the Dow name when DowDuPont splits up into three publicly traded businesses based around its materials sciences, agriculture and specialty products divisions.
Fitterling has been chief operating officer of the unit since 2015 and led the merger with DuPont, which closed last September.
DowDuPont, the nation's biggest chemical company headquartered in Michigan and Delaware, has substantial petrochemicals operations in the Houston area, including plants in Deer Park, Seadrift, La Porte and Freeport. The company has invested $6 billion in expanding its facilities along the Gulf Coast in
recent years.
The Freeport complex, one of the first major ethylene plants in the region, began operating last year with a 1.5 million-ton annual production capacity. The company eventually plans to boost its capacity by a quarter, which would make it the largest ethylene production plant in the world.
Like Liveris, Fitterling has spent his career at Dow since being hired in 1984. In the past decade, Fitterling has led the packaging and specialty plastics business, overseen the carve-out of Dow’s styrene and chlorine businesses and steered a $6 billion construction project on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Fitterling earned an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Missouri.
The 56-year-old is the first openly gay executive to be named CEO of a major chemical company. Dow under Liveris has been one of the most vocal proponents of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in corporate America, particularly in opposing state laws seen as hostile to LGBT employees. In the absence of federal action on gay rights, Dow has teamed up with companies such as Salesforce.com, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook to lobby against the laws and also support legal positions that protect LGBT rights.
Fitterling has been a leader of that effort at Dow. After nearly three decades at the company, he came out broadly in 2014.
In an interview last week, the executive acknowledged that he’d probably be the first openly gay CEO in the chemical industry if he got the job. Building an inclusive and equal environment is good for business, he said on the sidelines of the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston.
“We think it is great for innovation, it creates the right teamwork and the right dynamic that we want to have for hiring,” Fitterling said. “And we also think it is the right thing to do. Business today I think is setting a good role model example for how you do that. So being open about that and being public about that I think is important.”
Liveris had considered leaving last year amid activist pressure as DowDuPont looked to reshape management to prepare for a breakup.
“Now is the right time for me to effect my previously announced plan to transition and then to retire,” Liveris said in the statement.
Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management and Dan Loeb’s Third Point both targeted Dow and DuPont, forcing the company to change its plan for splitting up into more focused groups. Liveris faced pressure from Third Point, which didn’t want him involved in the merged company.