Huntsman

One of Hollywood's biggest movie stars often retreats to a nondescript building on a quiet industrial street in Van Nuys. For Kristen Stewart, the hide-out provides an escape from prying eyes of the paparazzi, a place where she can play arcade games and read scripts in her own private office. And if the 22-year-old ever needs motherly advice, all she has to do is walk down the hallway. That's where her mom, Jules Stewart, is busy plotting her own career. At 58, the elder Stewart is trying to emerge from the shadow of her daughter, who rocketed to fame on the vampire franchise "Twilight.

"I do suck fat. I will suck the fat off my steak," actress Alice Englert warns as she slides into a booth at Musso & Frank in Hollywood on a dreary, overcast day. "I just want to prepare you in advance that I'm known to be disgusting when I eat steak. " Alden Ehrenreich, her costar in the new film "Beautiful Creatures," is unfazed by her eagerness. Perhaps it's because after enduring a shoot involving sweltering, 90-degree Louisiana days, food poisoning and Southern accents, the two on-screen sweethearts have an easy familiarity.

A private equity firm has made a cash offer for Huntsman Corp. that at about $6 billion trumps a bid last week from a Dutch company. Huntsman, the nation's fourth-largest chemical company, said the offer from Apollo Management's Hexion Specialty Chemicals Inc. of Columbus, Ohio, valued Huntsman at $27.25 a share. That is an 8% premium over the $25.25 bid from Basell, a Dutch holding of U.S. industrialist Leonard Blavatnik's Access Industries. There were 221.

Huntsman Holdings Corp., whose unsolicited $813-million bid for Aristech Chemical Corp. prompted the chemicals company to seek a Japanese white knight, said today it has dropped its offer. Huntsman had previously said it might sweeten its $25-a-share offer to more than $27 per share, but said today it has ended talks with Aristech. Aristech recently agreed to be acquired for $845 million, or $27 a share, by a group led by Aristech management and the Japanese trading company Mitsubishi Corp.

Huntsman Corp. said it will buy the last piece of Texaco Inc.'s chemicals business for $600 million. The Salt Lake City chemical company has operated the remaining Texaco chemical business, which consists of a plant in Port Neches, Texas, since 1994. It bought Texaco Chemical Co. at that time for $1.06 billion, with an option to buy the Port Neches plant, which was under construction. The transaction is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 1997.

A major plastics supplier has agreed to purchase GE Plastics, a General Electric Co. subsidiary in Oxnard. Polycom Huntsman, which has plants in Missouri, Pennsylvania and New York, has signed a letter of intent to buy the Oxnard compounding plant, which has about 75 employees, from General Electric Co. Terms were not disclosed.

Another sign that we're entering a more rough-and-tumble period in the 2012 presidential race: Jon Huntsman, seeking a way to energize his campaign, is hitting Mitt Romney hard on his job-creation record while Romney was governor of Massachusetts. At a campaign event Monday evening in South Carolina, Huntsman, the former Utah governor, while not naming Romney directly, left no doubt whom he was talking about.  "When you look at the absolute increases in job creation, Utah led the way in the United States in terms of job creation," Huntsman said, according to CNN . "That, compared and contrasted with certain other states like Massachusetts, which I will just pull out randomly, not first, but 47th.

Jon Huntsman offered a vote of confidence Thursday on his top campaign strategist amid reports that his flagging presidential effort is plagued by in-fighting and disorganization. Speaking to reporters in Salem, N.H., Huntsman defended the work of John Weaver, the target of an incendiary article in Politico that aired complaints about Weaver by a former member of Huntsman's inner circle. “John Weaver is a critically important part of our team," Huntsman said, according to The Huffington Post.

Utah Democrats launched a preemptive strike against Jon Huntsman on the eve of his presidential campaign kickoff, knocking him for his shifting positions on issues important to Republican voters. Democrats in Huntsman's home state are parodying the former governor's enigmatic preview videos that feature a man on a motorcycle speeding through scenic parts of Utah. They say Huntsman is "riding away from his record. " (see videos below) "The Jon Huntsman that is announcing his candidacy tomorrow is not the Jon Huntsman that most Utahans have known," Utah Democratic Party chairman Wayne Holland told reporters in a conference call Monday.

Many candidates who go head-to-head with female rivals have ended up in verbal somersaults after delivering offhand comments about the appeal (or lack thereof) of female foes.   So rival presidential campaigns took notice of Jon Huntsman's observation that Michele Bachmann "makes for good copy - and good photography," words included in a lengthy New York magazine piece about the former Utah governor that was published this week. After a New Hampshire campaign event Monday, Huntsman, who is now trying to restart his stalled campaign, said there was "no slight intended.