Cathy Trost

HOUSTON–The clouds hanging dully over Houston have been trying to rain all morning and the air is clogged with humidity. On top of that, Zoltan Merszei, chairman of the Hooker Chemical Company, can’t seem to shake a lingering flu virus. Neither the weather nor disease, however, are capable of trampling his high spirits about the chemical business. Sales and profits on Hooker’s line of fertilizers, soil additives and industrial chemicals are up overall, despite the recession and a slump in chemical commodity prices. The company has just in the past month reached agreement with the federal government on cleanup programs for contaminated chemical waste dumps at Hyde Park, New York, and Lathrop, California, avoiding messy and expensive trials. Zoltan Merzsei, chairman of Hooker Chemical Company. Merszei is flying to Los Angeles tonight to finalize details of a major $1.1 billion venture which will bring a number of Italian petrochemical plants into the fold of Hooker and its prosperous parent company, Occidental Petroleum Corporation. “Biggest deal in the history of the chemical industry,” Merszei says with