PhillyInc: New headquarters, new name: Styron to become Trinseo

No sooner had Styron L.L.C. moved into its new corporate headquarters in Berwyn than it announced a name change is in the offing.

Styron, the plastics and chemicals business with about $5 billion in 2010 revenue that Dow Chemical Co. sold for $1.6 billion in June, has picked Trinseo as the name it will adopt this year in the 30 countries where it operates.

To me, the name Styron seemed like a good fit because the company's products, which are used in making home appliances, autos, carpets, consumer electronics, and more, were largely tied to (chemistry alert!) polystyrene and the styrene monomer.

But as Styron president and CEO Chris Pappas said in a news release: "We are much more than that."

While I would've suggested adopting Styron 'n' Things, the private company, now owned by Bain Capital Partners, hired the New York office of the branding firm Landor Associates, which wrung Trinseo from the word intrinsic.

At any rate, the company moved into about 23,000 square feet in an office building at 1000 Chesterbrook Blvd. in February. It has 75 employees there. (Would they be called Trinseons?)

That's actually a higher head count than the 40 to 50 people the company had predicted in July when Styron announced the relocation of its headquarters to the Philadelphia area from Midland, Mich.

In all, Styron has about 2,100 employees worldwide.

Soupcon of M&A

Besides crackers, what goes well with soup?

We may find out after Campbell Soup Co. hired an executive with a background in mergers and acquisitions. Raymond Liguori was named vice president of corporate development for the $7.7 billion food producer and marketer in Camden. He succeeds Tarkan Gurkan, a former Lehman Bros. investment banker who recently left Campbell Soup.

Liguori, 53, will lead a team in charge of M&A, strategic alliances, and joint ventures at Campbell Soup. Chief financial officer Craig Owens offered just one clue to Campbell Soup's possible strategy in a statement when he said Liguori had a "history of leading international transactions."

Before joining Campbell Soup, Liguori was vice president of mergers and acquisitions for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., handling international transactions since 2007. In addition to his tour of duty at the home of "Always Low Prices," Liguori handled M&A for AT&T Inc.

Trivia question: Who's Campbell Soup's largest customer? Wal-Mart, which accounted for 18 percent of its 2010 net sales.

Smooth moves