The strange beheading in France last week took place at an American-owned company whose chief is Iranian-born.
There was no indication, however, that the attack at an Air Products facility near Lyon, France, by an Arab Sunni had anything to do with the fact that an Iranian was named chief executive officer of the firm last year.
In fact, it may have been mere coincidence that the attack took place at Air Products.
The attacker, Yassin Salhi, 35, was born in France of parents from Algeria and Morocco. He worked for a private delivery firm and was making a delivery with his boss to Air Products. Once inside the facility, he strangled his French boss, cut off his head and mounted it on the Air Products fence. Then he drove his vehicle into a stack of Air Products canisters, apparently hoping to set off a major blast. But there was only a small explosion that injured Salhi and two Air Products staffers.
Air Products is an American firm headquartered in Allentown, Pennsylvania. It has facilities in more than 50 countries and employs more than 21,000 people.
As the name indicates, the company’s main business is breaking down the gases in the atmosphere and packaging them in pressurized canisters of oxygen, nitrogen, et cetera.
Founded in 1940, Air Products ranked 276th on the Fortune list of major businesses last year, with more than $10 billion in annual sales.
But the firm has been slipping in recent years. Last summer Seifollah (Seifi) Ghasemi was named chief executive after a battle over the company’s direction.
William Ackman, a billionaire investor, bought about 10 percent of Air Products a year ago and demanded changes. Ghasemi was one of several people brought onto the board under Ackman’s pressure. Last summer, John McGlade was fired as CEO and Ghasemi named to replace him. Ghasemi wears three hats—as chairman, president and chief executive officer.
Ghasemi earned his undergraduate degree from the Abadan Institute of Technology and got his MS in mechanical engineering from Stanford University in California.
He has spent more than two decades in industrial gases, serving as chairman and CEO of Rockwood Holdings, based in Princeton, New Jersey, from 2001 until he was brought into Air Products last year.
After the bizarre incident in France, Ghasemi said, “This reinforces that we all need to take safety and security very seriously, every day, and remain vigilant in everything we do.”
In an earlier interview with The Morning Call of Allentown, Ghasemi said his goal is to make Air Products “the Number One industrial gas company in the world.”
He said, “Air Products is spending more than it can afford. The numbers show we’re borrowing money to pay dividends. No company can survive doing that. So this is not as if we are saying we just want to become fatter and richer. We need to do some things to make sure we guarantee the future of the company as the years go by. And we can’t just continue to borrow money to pay for new plants and for paying the dividend.”
