Yara International

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Yara International ASA

Type	Public (OSE: YAR)
Founded	1905
Headquarters	Oslo, Norway
Key people	Thorleif Enger (President and CEO), Øivind Lund (Chairman of the board)
Industry	Chemicals
Products	Nitrogen fertilizers, nitrates
Revenue	NOK 57,486 million (2007)^[1]
Operating income	▲ NOK 4,987 million (2007)^[1]
Profit	▲ NOK 6,037 million (2007)^[1]
Employees	8,170 (2007)^[1]
Website	www.yara.com

Yara (OSE: YAR) is a Norwegian company and a world leading^{[citation needed]} supplier of plant nutrients in the form of mineral fertilizers. The core business of Yara is production and marketing of nitrogen fertilizer such as urea and nitrates. Yara also produces and sells ammonia, the key raw material for all nitrogen fertilizers.

The company was created on March 26, 2004 when Norsk Hydro's Hydro Agri division containing all the company's fertilizer business, was spun off as a separately stock-listed company. Hydro distributed all its Yara shares to Hydro's shareholders and presently has no ownership in Yara.

Yara's main office is located in Oslo. Yara bought 30.05% of Finnish fertilizer company Kemira GrowHow in May 2007 and tendered an offer to buy the rest.

[edit] US-based Investors and Yara

Yara shares trade on the Oslo Stock Exchange (OSE). For US-based investors this can translate to additional effort and fees with regards to cross-border trading. To ease investing and avoid such fees, in 2004 JPMorgan launched an American Depository Receipt (ADR) with the ticker "OTC: YARIY". ADRs trade like shares of US companies. One share of the YARIY ADR is equal to one share of YARA on the OSE. Dividends are granted under the ADR the same as they would directly from the OSE stock. The YARIY ADR has "Level 1 (Sponsored)" status. More about what ADRs are and how they work can be found at www.adr.com and in the Wiki entry for American Depository Receipt.