When chief executives speak of a “transition year”, they are usually telling investors that a hard 12 months lie ahead. On February 27th, when he presented BASF’s annual results, Markus Kamieth said that for the German chemicals giant 2026 was “likely to be another year of transition, during which our industry must expect to face significant headwinds”. On a cheerier note, he expected the global market to be looking up by the end of the year, with better to come in 2027. That could only be good for BASF’s own recovery from a rough few years.
