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COVINGTON, KY -- Ashland Inc. announced it will buy Hercules Inc. for $2.6 billion.

Ashland will pay $18.60 in cash and a 0.093 share of Ashland stock for each share of Hercules stock, valuing that stock at $23.01 each, a 38% premium from Thursday's close. The deal will be financed by cash on hand and by committed debt from Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS).

Ashland said the acquisition will boost its presence in the specialty chemical market. 
HERNDON, VA – A host of major OEM and EMS companies, under the auspices of iNEMI, has outlined a set of recommendations for managing Pb-free alloy alternatives.
 
The consortium members recommend the following to help manage the use of multiple solder alloys:
  • Drive convergence of Pb-free alloys.
  • Develop an industry-standard assessment methodology.
  • Establish performance guidelines.
  • Update standards.
  • Identify and differentiate alloys.
iNEMI members supporting these recommendations include Agilent Technologies, Celestica, Cisco, Delphi Electronics & Safety, Flextronics International, Hewlett-Packard, Intel Corporation, Jabil Circuit, Motorola, Plexus Corp., Sanmina-SCI, Sun Microsystems and Texas Instruments.
 
INEMI’s recommendations are available at
http://thor.inemi.org/webdownload/projects/ba/Pb-Free_Alloys/Alloy_recs.pdf

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