Moving up: Baton Rouge-based specialty chemicals company Albemarle Corp. will replace TECO Energy Inc. on the Standard & Poor’s 500 after the market closes on Thursday, June 30. It will be added to the S&P 500 Global Industry Classification Standard Specialty Chemical Sub-Industry index, according to a press release issued this morning. Albemarle currently is on the S&P MidCap 400. Canada’s Emera Inc. is acquiring Tampa, Florida-based TECO Energy. Also this week, Albemarle announced that it has agreed to sell its Chemetall Surface Treatment unit to German-based chemical giant BASF for $3.2 billion. Albemarle had acquired Chemetall in January 2015 as part of the $6.2 billion acquisition of Rockwood Holdings Inc. of New Jersey. The deal is expected to be finalized by the end of the year.
Moving out: Grambling State University President Willie Larkin has resigned at the University of Louisiana Board of Supervisors meeting on the Louisiana Tech University campus in Ruston. The News-Star reports Thursday’s announcement came following an executive session by the board to evaluate Larkin. Interim ULS President Dan Reneau says Larkin’s letter of resignation had been accepted. In brief comments to the board, Larkin suggested he was not a quitter, but the time had come for him to leave. Larkin said he had enjoyed his time serving at the university and that “Grambling State University will succeed and it will survive.” The resignation came less than a year after Larkin took the helm at the university. The tumultuous tenure saw Larkin take the job on the heels of Grambling losing its nursing program. Read the full story.
No deal: A recent effort to settle lawsuits stemming from a 2012 explosion and fire on a offshore oil platform that killed three workers has been unsuccessful, according to a notice filed Thursday in federal court in New Orleans. Fuelfix.com reports negotiators met over a six-day period in an effort to resolve the lawsuits stemming from the fatal accident off the Louisiana coast on a platform owned by Houston-based Black Elk Energy. The negotiations were described as “productive” but “unfortunately no resolution has been achieved as of this date,” according to the notice U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael B. North signed. Jury selection began Monday in the case that is being tried in New Orleans. It combines nine lawsuits filed against Black Elk Energy and its contractors by family members of the workers who died and injured workers. Some of the parties in the lawsuits have settled as recently as last week.
