The story
1930s-1970s
Great Lakes Chemical Company was founded in Michigan in 1936 to extract bromine from underground salt water brine deposits. It was acquired by McClanahan Oil in 1948 and rechristened Great Lakes Oil and Chemical Company, but by 1960 the company had moved away from oil and gas, instead focusing on the research and production of bromine-based chemicals. At about this time, the company assumed its current name (Great Lakes Chemical Corporation) and built the world's largest bromine plant in southern Arkansas.
1980s-1990s
Great Lakes grew through the following decades, acquiring several smaller companies in its market and establishing its world headquarters in West Lafayette, Indiana. Among those acquired by Great Lakes was BioLab in 1996, a producer of pool and spa products. The ticker symbol for Great Lakes on the New York Stock Exchange was GLK.
On May 22, 1998, Great Lakes spun off their petroleum additives business as Octel Corp (NYSE:OTL).
2000s
In July 2005, Great Lakes merged with Crompton Corporation (formerly Crompton and Knowles) to form Chemtura, which was headquartered in Philadelphia. As of 2015 the corporation employed approximately 2700 people for research, manufacturing, logistics, sales and administration. In addition, the company had significant joint ventures primarily in the United States. Net sales in 2014 were $2.2 billion. As of December 31, 2014, Chemtura's global total assets were $2.7 billion.
From Wikipedia’s article on Great Lakes Chemical Corporation, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4