Pros
-There are good people there from legacy Olin and Dow organisations. -The previous Olin culture was very family oriented and company made you feel like it cares for all employees. -Used to have a very warm atmosphere and everyone was good friends with one another. We saw ourselves retiring together. -When the company made a loss, the previous CEO John Fischer leveraged his contacts to get loans to protect the company and employees. -Salary and 401K contribution. -Very nice office location in Clayton, MO.
Cons
-Company is controlled by activist investors now. Sachem head pumped and dumped the company after engineering John Fischer out and installing Scott Sutton in as CEO. It is 87% owed by investor institutions now. -In a typical case of crony capitalism, Scott removed one layer of senior leadership and brought in his friends from Celanese(his ex company) and turned the company's culture upside down. Where it used to be warm and friendly, it is now cold and overly corporate. -His strategy caused most customers to abandon the company. Angry customers never forget, and never forgive. -There are 3 lawsuits(from ex-customers) against the company involving antitrust and other shenanigans. Not surprised if there are more on the way. -After the company brought in so many of Scott's friends from Celanese as VPs(paying them upwards of $1.5M a year), they closed facilities and let go of many employees. Now everyone is left to pick up the pieces from the fallout. Worse, they had a "lifting people" call to talk about how the company "lifts" employees right after letting so many good people go. Talk about tone deaf. -Just look at the company's stock buy back, it spends more money on stock buyback versus its net earnings. At the same time, people in the executive team are selling off their stock options. That's an indication they are not confident of Olin's future. -The CEO of Olin is Scott Sutton, not Joe Rupp. Joe Rupp(and Jon Fischer) is a good man. Scott was asked to go recently, so I rest my case.