Air Products names Eduardo Menezes CEO

Seifi Ghasemi is out as the CEO of Air Products and Chemicals less than 2 weeks after losing control of the board at the industrial gas firm’s annual shareholder meeting. The new board named Eduardo F. Menezes CEO, effective Feb. 7. Menezes, 61, has worked in the industrial gas industry, primarily at Praxair, since graduating as a chemical engineer from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. His most recent position was leading that firm’s operations in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, overseeing $8 billion in annual sales and 18,000 employees. After Praxair and Linde merged in 2018, Menezes briefly continued that role in the combined firm. The CEO change is a direct result of a successful activist campaign by the investment firm Mantle Ridge. A minority shareholder in Air Products, Mantle Ridge spent a large part of 2024 campaigning against Ghasemi and a corporate board that the investor