DISCLAIMER: First of all, I apologise for the tone of voice and vocabulary I’ll be using to describe the “legacy” of Kadri, CEO of Solvay / Syensqo.
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Short history and summary
Solvay is a Belgian chemical company that used to be one of the biggest player around. Remember this picture with chemistry celebrities … that was the golden age of Solvay.
Things started to get bad for Solvay because it became a dinosaur going nowhere. They hired Kadri to revamp the company.
Kadri …. excuse my french here … was able to bullshit her way into the CEO throne but she lacked the alpha ‘hunter’ behaviour needed to be a good CEO of such a large company. I don’t know how she got there. You need a hunter to turn such huge monolithic companies around and make them agile and profitable.
Anyway, They recently split Solvay into: Solvay and syensqo
The CEO of the newly split company Solvay (essential chemicals) is Philippe Kehren. He was appointed the incoming CEO of the new Solvay in 2023, succeeding Ilham Kadri, who was the CEO of the combined Solvay entity before its split into Solvay and Syensqo.
Philippe Kehren: became the CEO of the new Solvay in 2023.
Ilham Kadri: was the CEO of the original Solvay and later the CEO of Syensqo (the advanced materials and composites part). She is set to leave her role as Syensqo CEO at the end of 2025, being replaced by Mike Radossich in 2026.
The split of the Solvay group into Solvay (essential chemicals) and Syensqo (advanced materials) was finalized in December 2023.
Kadri Legacy
Now they fired Kadri because she wasn’t the person for the job.
In the video below she describes Solvay as … the legacy company ….I don’t know if she realised it but the word ‘legacy’ is used in a pejorative sense in today’s world. Legacy is what you want to get rid off but can’t do it. Legacy is usually the root of the problem in today’s disruptive world.
Kadri wasn’t able to surround her with disruptive people. She wen’t too ‘legacy-ish’. So the companies have been split, but are not in the safe zone.