American specialty chemicals and materials company Rohm and Haas has announced that Dr J. Michael Fitzpatrick, president and chief operating officer of the company has elected to retire, effective from January, 2005.

Fitzpatrick, 57, joined the company in 1975 on completion of his studies at Harvard University and has worked solely for the one company for his entire professional career. He cited this fact as his reason for leaving, saying that he was at a point in his life where he needs to seek new challenges. He has held his current position since 1999.

Commenting on Fitzgerald’s departure, chairman and CEO of Rohm and Haas, Raj Gupta said: "Mike has been an extremely important partner in the six years we have teamed-up to complete the transformation of Rohm and Haas following the acquisitions of Morton International, Lea Ronal and Rodel. He has an enormous capacity for understanding our core technologies, and has contributed to our global business success in ways too numerous to catalogue. In addition to his innate leadership abilities, and talent for managing large complex undertakings, Mike has an intuitive grasp of multi-cultural operations and strategy which results from living abroad for Rohm and Haas for 13 consecutive years."

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