In 1997, Hoechst decided to focus on life sciences and started to lose interest in Messer Griesheim.
In 1999, when Hoechst merged with Rhone-Poulenc to form Aventis, it decided to sell Messer Griesheim's welding business.
Beginning this month the Hoechst-Ariad Genomics Center will test some 30, 000 genes for activity in forming bone cells.
Wanting to build a cardiovascular franchise, King set its sights on Altace, which belonged to Hoechst.
Companies such as DaimlerChrysler and Hoechst have set the pace of change in their industries.
Gimmicks such as declaring English to be the official Hoechst language have worn thin.
Hoechst had 67%, but the Messer family kept 50% of the voting rights.
The former Hoechst headquarters, a redbrick relic of the 1920s, is an admired piece of Bauhaus architecture.
The Greens had shut down Hoechst's new plant to produce insulin, setting back the biotech industry ten years.
Companies such as Hoechst, which used to funnel their biotech investments abroad, particularly into America, are rethinking their strategies.
Even many large companies such as Hoechst AG, Union Carbide, Xerox, DuPont, C.
Having invented aspirin, the world's best-known medicine, Bayer is determined, unlike Hoechst, to hang on to its pharmaceuticals business.
Hoechst's merger with Marion Merrill Dow in 1995 seemed to provide an opening.
But Hoechst's fizz unfizzed when the company announced its 1996 results in March.
In 1965, Hans merged the company with Knapsack-Griesheim, a subsidiary of Hoechst.
Frankfurters, in particular, are proud of the huge chemical complex straddling the river Main at Hoechst, west of the city.
Germany's Hoechst said it may float its Celanese and Ticona units in an accelerated bid to get out of industrial chemicals.
Hoechst had stopped promoting it, but the drug's patent extended until 2008.
To quickly compare the genes, the Genomics Center is using gene sequencing technology developed by Lynx Therapeutics, a biotech partner of Hoechst in Hayward, Calif.
Hoechst will be mainly a pharmaceutical company, employing more Americans than Germans.
The huge restructuring under way is transforming Hoechst into a life-sciences group.
Hoechst, for instance, a chemicals giant that splurged on Merrell Dow and Marion Roussell (American and French pill-makers) has performed poorly ever since.
Though Hoechst, once the local chemical giant, was absorbed into sanofi-aventis of France in 1999, its Frankfurt site still churns out polymers, pigments and pharmaceuticals.
When Hans retired in 1994, a new chief executive drafted in from Hoechst embarked on rapid expansion into North and South America, South Africa, central Europe and Asia.
This year, with companies like Lufthansa and Schering joining Daimler-Benz and Hoechst in the options parade, the number is up to nearly one out of three.
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This month, banks are putting the finishing touches to a euro525m loan to finance the business, and at more beneficial rates than the bond used to buy out Hoechst.
In 2001 the private-equity arms of Allianz and Goldman Sachs, assisted by Goldman's investment bankers, constructed a deal which bought out Hoechst and put them in as 67% shareholders.
For a company that was spun out of Hoechst, a German chemicals giant, as a loss-maker in 1995, a rising share price has been a protection against takeovers.
Hoechst, which gave the American patent in 1994 to a non-profit organisation, will now transfer the worldwide rights outside America to a one-product company, making it immune from boycotts.
As precedent he cites the example of Seldane, an antihistamine developed by Hoechst Marion Roussel (now Aventis (nyse: AVE - news - people )) to treat hay fever.
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