Sealed Air

In 1957, American engineer Alfred W. Fielding and Swiss inventor Marc Chavannes attempted to invent plastic wallpaper with a paper backing. While the wallpaper failed, Fielding and Chavannes later realized that what they had come up with could be used for packing material. Sealed Air was founded in 1960 based on this invention of Bubble Wrap. The same year, Sealed Air raised $85,000 in its initial public offering. Fielding served as executive vice president and director of Sealed Air until his retirement in 1987, while Chavannes worked mostly as a consultant.Shortly after a 1998 business restructuring of the global conglomerate W.R. Grace Company-Conn, the original Sealed Air was merged into Grace subsidiary W. R. Grace & Co. NY, and the surviving company was named W. R. Grace & Co. Shortly thereafter, this W.R. Grace & Co renamed itself Sealed Air, the name of the current entity, but now a vastly larger corporation due to the Grace components. Years later, in 2002, this Sealed Air Corporation was required to pay to W. R. Grace Company-Conn $728 million to settle bankruptcy and fraud allegations brought against the original merger. T.J. Dermot Dunphy served as CEO from 1971 to 2000. An Oxford University graduate who received his MBA from Harvard Business School, he became chairman of Kildare Enterprises, LLC in November 2000 after leaving Sealed Air. During his tenure at Sealed Air, sales grew from $5 million to $3 billion.William Hickey served as CEO from the year 2000 to March 2013. He previously served in several capacities at Sealed Air, including COO, executive vice president, CFO, vice president, and general manager of the Food Packaging Division and the Cellu Products Division. Before working for Sealed Air, he was CPA at Arthur Young and CFO of W. R. Grace and Company's Latin American operations.Sealed Air produced the foam that was ignited in the 2003 the Station nightclub fire and has paid $25 million to victims in various civil settlements.In March 2013, Jérôme Péribère took over as CEO and president of Sealed Air. He obtained his business economics and finance degree from Sciences Po in Paris, France. He previously served as president and COO of Sealed Air before taking over as CEO, and prior to joining Sealed Air, he worked in several managerial roles with the Dow Chemical Company from 1977 to 2012.On July 23, 2014, Sealed Air announced that it would be moving its global headquarters to Charlotte, North Carolina. In January 2018, Ted Doheny took over as CEO.