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Air Products will likely decide where to build its new headquarters within the next month, according to its leader. Seifi Ghasemi, chairman, president and CEO of the Trexlertown-based industrial gas company, spoke Friday morning during a Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce event at Saucon Valley Country Club attended by more than 100 people. Taking questions from Chamber President and CEO Tony Iannelli, Ghasemi reiterated that the Fortune 500 company will remain in the Lehigh Valley and is nearing a final decision, but that he’s committed to telling employees first. “We want to get the news out as soon as possible,” he said afterward. “But we’re negotiating with a lot of different parties, so we don’t want to jump the gun… we want to make sure everything is under control before we make the announcement.” Ghasemi said members of the company’s board of directors had suggested moving the headquarters anywhere from Philadelphia to Houston to Shanghai, but he insisted on remaining in the Lehigh Valley. “I believe very strongly that every company has a foundational culture, and that there is a lot of value in preserving it,” he said. Earlier this year, Air Products narrowed its options to constructing a new office building on its existing site in Trexlertown, moving to a nearby property or moving to a site in Upper Saucon Township. Ghasemi said its current headquarters, with 1.5 million square feet of office space and labs spread out across 235 acres, is old and very expensive to maintain — though the company has worked to reduce energy use. According to its most recent Sustainability Report, released in May, Air Products last year reduced electricity by 8 percent, natural gas consumption by 3 percent, and water consumption by 2 percent. Asked about the United States’ shifting trade policy and foreign policy under the Trump administration, Ghasemi noted that it's a challenge to ascertain “how much of the noise is real and how much of the noise is positioning.” But he emphasized that Air Products’ business is a fundamentally local one. “We do not make products in the United States that we then export to China, and we do not make products in China that we then export to the United States,” he said. “We supply (gases) to local steel and chemical plants… so tariffs don’t really affect us on an immediate basis.” An escalating trade conflict would have consequences for everyone, he said, but Ghasemi said he tries not to worry about things over which he has little control. “You can’t plan the future of the company based on who’s in office,” he said. “You need to do what’s right for the country in the long term. That’s how we behave.” As for Air Products’ future, Ghasemi said the company plans to invest “at least” $15 billion over the next five years in projects and, potentially, acquisitions of smaller companies or technology. He said investors are skeptical because the company has never set a time frame to deploy that much capital. “People do the math and say, ‘That’s $3 billion a year, my God, that’s a lot of money!’” he said. “But our job is to perform, and I think we will.” Ghasemi also noted that investors have given management room to make its own decisions because the company has been performing well (its stock has basically doubled over the past five years and was at $168 as of Friday afternoon). “You need to have a credible, long-term strategy, and you have to execute,” he said. “Strategy by itself is not a real thing. It’s only execution that makes it real.” Read the original article here.