Everchem Specialty Chemicals announced today that Del Felter has joined the company as Vice President of Market and Business Development.
Del has over 35 years’ experience in the polyurethane manufacturing industry and over 20 years of experience in executive management. Del has spent the majority of his career with Carpenter Co., holding positions ranging from plant management to development of their consumer products business to running the strategic chemical businesses.
Additionally, Del has been a Senior Vice President with INOAC USA responsible for facilitating profitable growth for the company within North America and globally by managing the Industrial, Consumer and Medical business units.
Del recently held positions at FXI, Inc as the Senior Vice President of the newly created Product Management Group and previously as Senior Vice President – Corporate Development & Strategy, Del was involved by leading the integration planning teams through the acquisition of INNOCOR.
CHICAGO — Daubert Chemical Company Inc. recently announced a series of key promotions and new hires within the company, including the role of president and CEO. Dr. Mike Duncan, previously executive vice president of technology at Daubert, will succeed Matt Puz as president and CEO.
“Matt Puz has played an indispensable role in Daubert’s success throughout his tenure over the past seven years,” said Matthew McGinnis, vice president of commercial development. “Under his leadership, we’ve grown our automotive coatings business through the launch of Nox-Rust 1290HP and other products, and launched a new, innovative coating, Nox-Rust ChipShield, designed to provide enhanced durability versus road debris as well as corrosive conditions. On behalf of the rest of the leadership team here at Daubert Chemical, we are delighted to congratulate Matt Puz on his upcoming retirement, as well as to celebrate Mike’s promotion into the role of president and CEO. The insight and expertise Mike brings to the table will continue to usher in a new era of innovation at Daubert.”
Duncan brings more than 30 years of industry experience to the role – and 10 of those years have been spent with Daubert as the vice president of technology. Duncan began his career at Keil Chemical, and has held leadership roles at companies such as D-A Stuart Company, Castrol, and Fuchs Lubricants. Duncan holds a doctorate in Organic Chemistry from the University of Illinois Chicago. An active supporter of industry organizations, Duncan held the role of president of STLE in 2019-2020.
Duncan’s promotion to president and CEO leads a series of personnel moves for Daubert Chemical Company that also includes:
Dr. Aaron Sanders was hired for the role of vice president of technology. Sanders brings over 20 years of experience to Daubert, and most recently held the title of R&D director – Oilfield Solutions at Stepan Company. Sanders holds a doctorate in Organic Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
Mark Pawelski, is retiring from his role as executive vice president of operations. Pawelski devoted 44 years of service to Daubert, and will continue to consult for special projects.
Greg Merchen, formerly the vice president of manufacturing, succeeded Mark Pawelski as vice president of operations. Merchen will cover all of Daubert’s manufacturing areas as well as customer service and engineering. He holds a degree in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University and an MBA from Keller Graduate School of Management.
“It’s an exciting time for Daubert,” said Puz. “As we welcome new leaders into the fold and continue our tradition of meeting customer needs with high-quality products and service, the next generation of Daubert solutions is sure to exceed expectations.”
Has The Housing Market Bottomed? The Surprising Result From A Little-Known Market Indicator
by Tyler Durden
Monday, Jan 30, 2023 – 03:20 PM
It may come as a bit of a shock to those who have been following the creeping freeze in housing transactions as the bid-ask spread grows to monstrous proportions, leading to a record crash in pending home sales…
… but even though mortgage rates ticked higher back to 6% in January, there is growing speculation that the housing market has bottomed. Why? Because as Goldman’s Rich Provorotsky notes, “bet you didn’t know there were housing price futures…they bottomed in Q4 and have been rallying.” Indeed, the Housing Composite Index traded on the CME is up decidedly in the past month after hitting a 16 month low in November.
Why this surprising bounce? A big reason for the unexpected rebound may be a recent report from real estate company Redfin which last Wednesday reported that “the housing market has begun to recover from a trough in the second week of November with buyers returning at a faster pace than sellers. The number of Redfin customers asking for first tours has improved by 17 percentage points from the November low, and the number of clients contacting.”
Furthermore, according to the report, Redfin agents to begin the home-buying process has improved by 13 points: “I’ve seen more homes go under contract this month than in the entire fourth quarter,” Angela Langone, a San Jose, California, agent, said in the report.
Among notable market moves, Redfin points to mortgage applications which are up 28% from early November as the average 30-year-fixed mortgage rate has dropped to 6.15% from its peak of 7.08% in November, the biggest decline since 2009. Pending home sales rose 3% in December from November.
Preliminary data on the share of Redfin agents’ offers facing bidding wars points to small upticks in the Seattle and Tampa markets this month (however, since this is an uneven trend, expect it to take some time before bidding wars nationally show an upward trend).
“Bidding wars are back in Seattle,” said local Redfin real estate agent Shoshana Godwin. “One of our Issaquah listings got 12 offers and is under contract for $155,000 over the $1.4 million list price. The buyer waived every contingency, handed over $300,000 of earnest money and is letting the seller stay for free for two months after closing. Another home in Seattle’s popular Ballard neighborhood was recently delisted after sitting on the market for over three months. The seller relisted it last week and it went pending in under a day.”
Eric Auciello, Redfin’s team manager in Tampa, has seen three modest single-family homes priced around $300,000 wind up in bidding wars in central Florida this month, with 16, 17 and 23 competing offers, respectively.
But while one can accuse Redfin of bias – after all the company recently laid off some 13% of its employees due to the housing market collapse so it is certainly interested in sparking some animal spirits in the sector – it is not alone in predicting a housing recovery. One week ago, Goldman’s Jan Hatzius published the bank’s Housing Outlook for 2023 in which he predicted that “home sales appear set to turn higher.” That’s because “mortgage purchase applications have averaged 9% above their October trough so far in January and survey-based measures of purchasing intentions have rebounded sharply” and while Goldman expects that existing home sales could decline slightly further “but will likely bottom in Q1 (GS forecast: Q1 average of 3.85mn saar vs. 4.02mn in December) before rebounding modestly by year-end (GS forecast: Q4 average of 4.1mn).”
Here are some more observations from the Goldman note (full report available to pro subs):
We forecast that housing starts will take longer to stabilize, declining to a trough pace of 1¼mn in 2023Q4 (vs. 1.4mn in 2022Q4) before recovering next year. We expect completions to total 1½mn this year, the most since 2007, which will help to clear the backlog of homes under construction and contribute to a modest increase in the homeowner vacancy rate (GS forecast of 1.2% in 2023Q4 vs. 0.9% now and 1.4% in 2019Q4).
We expect a peak-to-trough decline in national home prices of roughly 6% and for prices to stop declining around mid-year.
On a regional basis, we project larger declines across the Pacific Coast and Southwest regions—which have seen the largest increases in inventory on average—and more modest declines across the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest—which have maintained greater affordability over the past couple years.
Higher rates and lower home prices will increase the drag on GDP growth from negative wealth effects and declining mortgage equity withdrawal, but we believe that the aggregate drag on GDP growth from the housing sector peaked in 2022Q4 at 1.1pp and will moderate to just 0.25pp by 2023Q4.
If the housing price futures market – and Goldman – is right in pricing in a housing trough than the consequences could confound markets: on one hand, a stabilization in housing will likely make any coming recession less severe; on the other, since housing is the primary channel by which the Fed can slowdown the economy, any failure to cripple this key US asset, could mean that Powell will be stuck in a “higher for longer” mode for, well, longer than the market expects. As a reminder, as the following Morgan Stanley chart shows, consensus is that the Fed is about 8 months away from its first rate cut, which will be promptly followed by ~4.5 25bps rate cuts.
DORAVILLE, Ga. – Serta Simmons Bedding’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing Monday provides a look at the company’s financial status showing the company owes more than $62 million to its top 10 unsecured creditors.
The petition, filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, lists assets and liabilities of $1 billion to $10 billion. The filing that includes SSB and 13 of its affiliates estimates its number of creditors to be somewhere between 25,000 and 50,000.
The filing lists the company’s 30 largest unsecured claims. The hardest hit were suppliers of springs, foam and nonwovens, and logistics companies.
Everchem Updates Archive 
Sign Up for Email Updates
