Germany and U.S., Celanese Corp., 2005 Odd Shrs Specimen Stock Cert., VF-XF ABN Blue. Celanese Corporation, also known as Hoechst Celanese, is a Fortune 500 global technology and specialty materials company with its headquarters in Irving, Texas, United States. The company is a leading producer of acetyl products, which are intermediate chemicals for nearly all major industries, and is the world's largest producer of vinyl acetate monomer (VAM). In 1998, Hoechst combined most of its industrial chemical operations in a new company, Celanese AG, and, in 1999, Hoechst spun off Celanese AG as a publicly traded, German corporation, traded on both the Frankfurt and New York stock exchanges. On 16 December 2003, the U.S. private equity firm Blackstone Group announced a takeover offer for Celanese, after two years of wooing management. Shareholders formally approved the offer from Blackstone on 16 June 2004, and Blackstone completed the acquisition of Celanese AG. The company was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange, and Blackstone changed the entity's name to Celanese Corporation. Under Blackstone, a number of streamlining initiatives were undertaken, and several acquisitions were made. On 21 January 2005, Celanese Corporation conducted an initial public offering and became a publicly traded corporation traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "CE". When Blackstone sold the last of its shares in 2007, it had made five times what it had invested and it, and its co-investors collected a $2.9 billion profit.