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The story
American IG owes its genesis to a German business conglomerate, namely, Interessens-Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG, or IG Farben for short. The business, along with the industrial empire that IG Farben controlled and commanded, has been described as "a state within a state."
The Farben cartel was created in 1925, when Hermann Schmitz, the master organizer, with Wall Street financial assistance, created the giant chemical corporation, combining six German chemical companies — Badische Anilin- und Sodafabrik Ludwigshafen (BASF), Bayer, Agfa, Hoechst, Weiler-ter-Meer, and Griesheim-Elektron. These six companies were merged into Interessen-Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG, or IG Farben for short.
In the year 1929, the American holdings of IG Farben, namely, the American branches of Bayer Company, General Aniline Works (formerly Grasselli Dyes), Agfa-Ansco, 50% interest in Winthrop Chemical Company, and 50% in Alcoa's American Magnesium Corporation were incorporated under the laws of Delaware under the name American I.G. Chemical Corporation. The certificate of incorporation was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1929. American IG was controlled by a Swiss holding company in Basel called Internationale Gesellschaft für Chemische Unternehmungen AG (International Corporation for Chemical Engineering) or IG Chemie.
The controlling interest of this entity rested with IG Farben in Germany. In the following decade before the outbreak of the Second World War, the American IG Chemical Corporation, or American IG, played important role in manufacturing of dyes, chemicals, and fertilizers, among others. Among its board of directors members were Edsel Ford and Walter C. Teagle.
In 1933–1939, American IG repeatedly denied its ties with I.G. Farben and reported to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, first, that it "had no parent", then, that it "did not know if whether it had a parent."
On October 30, 1939, after a merge with General Aniline Works, the stock of American I.G. Chemical Corporation was transferred to General Aniline & Film Corporation. Its assets were valued as $10,880,860 with holdings in Standard Oil ($6,979,946), Sterling Products Inc. ($2,424,320), and du Pont ($899,250).
From Wikipedia’s article on American IG, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3