Imperial Chemical Industries

British chemical company founded in 1926 by the merger of four chemical firms and for decades the country's largest manufacturer, with its head office in London. Made industrial chemicals, explosives, fertilisers, dyestuffs, plastics, paints and pharmaceuticals, its pharmaceuticals division discovering beta blockers, tamoxifen and anaesthetics, ran the Central Toxicology Laboratory at Alderley Park, and was broken up from 1993 when its pharmaceutical and agrochemical businesses were demerged as Zeneca before the rest was sold to AkzoNobel in 2008.