Business | Specialty chemicals

Cleaning up

Bed bugs and fracking are not the only things Ecolab has going for it

|ST PAUL

“WE ARE the nerds in the businesses nerds don’t usually bother with,” says Douglas Baker, the boss of Ecolab since 2004. Some companies, Ferrari for example, are household names even though most people have never tried their products. Ecolab, a specialty-chemicals firm, is the opposite, practically unknown to the millions of people who consume the fruits of its labour. Exterminating bedbugs is not a staple of Facebook chatter.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Cleaning up”

No way to run a country

From the October 5th 2013 edition

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