Mr Hutter, who was appointed as managing director of the company for a period of four years commencing June 15, 1997, and ending on June 14, 2001, has been associated with the Ciba group of companies for roughly 40 years. A Swiss national and a commercial diploma holder of KV Basel, Switzerland, Mr Hutter hands over charge to Mr Bilimoria who has been the company's finance director since September 1997. Mr Bilimoria, was earlier with Hindustan Ciba Geigy as its vice-president (finance). Mr Hutter's plans to call it a day comes at a time when the Swiss multinational has been realigning its local operations. CSCI has recently completed the buyout of YN Mafatlal group company IDI's holding in their joint venture companies, Indo Swiss Textile Chemicals (ISTCL) and Pigment Specialities India.

CSCI is expected to eventually merge ISTCL and Pigment Specialities India (PSI), now 100 per cent owned by the CSCI.

Meanwhile, CSCI has also received shareholder approval to "sell, transfer or assign" the company's performance polymers division/business to Avanti Performance Polymers Pvt Ltd (established by Morgan Grenfell Pvt Equity Ltd) for Rs 40 crore. This is in line with the Swiss MNC's global plans on this front.

The sales proceeds will be used to reduce CSCI's borrowings. The valuation of this business, pegged in the range of Rs 38 crore to Rs 42 crore, was done by Ambit Corporate Finance Pte.

For the year ended March 31, 2000, CSCI's performance polymers business (which has the popular Araldite adhesive brand) registered sales of Rs 105 crore, while for April and May 2000 sales were Rs 17.6 crore. (The company had `budgeted' sales of Rs 98 crore for the current year, with a profit before tax of Rs 7 crore).