Does it seem like the world has changed during the past six months? Or at least your perception of the world?
It has, obviously, in many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many big ways.
Also in some small ways. Not to make light of what's been an absolute staggering first half of the year, but how many of you thought that you'd also have to learn a new name for the biggest compounder in North America?
That's right, when we logged on to email on July 1, we found that PolyOne Corp. is now Avient Corp. The new name reflects a completion of its acquisition of Clariant AG's masterbatches business, a $1.44 billion deal. It adds a business with annual sales of $1.1 billion, 46 manufacturing sites in 29 countries and 3,500 employees.
"They are joining us on Day One of this new era for our company, which as of today will be named Avient," said Robert Patterson, who retains his titles as chairman, president and CEO, but under a new company name.
PolyOne had only been around 20 years, since the company was formed from a merger of materials firms Geon Corp. and M.A. Hanna Co. in 2000. And Avient isn't the first name change that has come about as the result of M&A activities. There hasn't been a GE Plastics or Bayer Plastics business for years, obviously.
But Avient? If you deal with the auto industry, you may already have confused it with Adient, the seating supplier spun off from Johnson Controls Inc.
And then there are other names made up by corporations intended to imply ... something? The auto industry also brought us Covisint, which was supposed to evoke a cooperative vision. And Visteon, likewise playing on the word "vision."
But at least Avient will be higher up in the alphabetical order than PolyOne.
And, by the way, if the development of corporate names intrigues you, check out an old episode of the The Startup podcast in which the founders of the podcast company go into detail about their name, Gimlet.