Air Products & Chemicals

Chairman, President, and CEO Seifi Ghasemi drives the firm's strategic direction and major project commitments. Activist investor Paul Hilal of Mantle Ridge LP serves on the Board of Directors, influencing governance and capital deployment priorities. Decisions on multi-billion-dollar projects are approved at the board level, blending executive leadership with shareholder representation.

Air Products uses its corporate balance sheet to develop, own, and operate facilities directly, rather than raising blind-pool funds. It partners with strategic co-investors such as ACWA Power on the NEOM Green Hydrogen Complex. This structure allows it to maintain control over assets while sharing risk on megaprojects.

The firm is building three large-scale hydrogen production hubs: a blue hydrogen and blue ammonia complex in Louisiana, a net-zero hydrogen energy complex in Alberta, Canada, and the NEOM Green Hydrogen Complex in Saudi Arabia. These facilities aim to produce hydrogen for mobility, industrial decarbonization, and ammonia export. The firm targets the full value chain from production to fueling stations.

It functions as both. It supplies industrial gases to downstream customers in electronics, refining, and aerospace while also acting as a principal investor in multi-billion-dollar energy transition assets. The firm builds, owns, and operates its plants, holding them as long-duration infrastructure.

Major deployments span North America, with gas supply expansions for Samsung in South Korea, hydrogen plants in Louisiana and Alberta, and an air separation unit in Florida. Its largest single project is the NEOM Green Hydrogen Complex in Saudi Arabia, developed with ACWA Power. It also maintains legacy industrial gas operations in China and the Mid-Atlantic United States.

Mantle Ridge LP, led by Paul Hilal, is an activist investor that secured a board seat at Air Products. Hilal influenced the firm's strategic pivot toward disciplined capital allocation and its leadership structure, with Seifi Ghasemi continuing as Chairman and CEO. Their engagement reflects active shareholder oversight of project selection and governance.

Customers include refineries like PBF Energy, semiconductor manufacturers such as Samsung Electronics, and space launch providers in Florida. The firm supplies oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and helium to these industrial and technology sectors under long-term contracts. Its energy transition assets target ammonia and hydrogen markets for export and domestic decarbonization.