Naren Srinivasan Named Vice President, Strategy and Corporate Development, GCP Applied Technologies Inc.

W. R. Grace & Co. (NYSE: GRA) announced today that Naren Srinivasan has been named Vice President, Strategy and Corporate Development of GCP Applied Technologies Inc., the public company to be formed by the planned spin-off in early 2016 of Grace’s Construction Products segment and its Darex Packaging Technologies business. Upon the split, Srinivasan will lead GCP’s global strategy and corporate development activities as well as the communications and customer applications functions. He will report to Gregory E. Poling, GCP’s designated President and Chief Executive Officer, and serve as a member of the new company’s leadership team. He will be located at GCP’s global headquarters in Cambridge, MA.

Srinivasan comes to GCP from The Hertz Corporation (NYSE: HTZ), where he was Senior Vice President, Global Strategy & Corporate Development. Srinivasan also held senior strategy and corporate development roles at Meadwestvaco Corporation. His previous private equity experience includes UBS Investment Bank; Five Arrows Capital; Evercore Partners; and Dillon, Read & Co.

“Strategy and Corporate Development—including our acquisition activity—will be a key role and vital to our growth strategy,” said Poling. “Naren is a talented leader with tremendous experience in this area, and we’re very excited he is now on the GCP team.”

GCP Applied Technologies will have customers in more than 110 countries, operations on six continents, and a team of 2,500 employees. Through applied knowledge and service excellence, GCP Applied Technologies provides premier specialty construction chemicals and specialty building materials for many of the world’s most renowned structures, and packaging technologies for the best-known consumer brands.

About Grace

Built on talent, technology, and trust, Grace is a leading global supplier of catalysts; engineered and packaging materials; and specialty construction chemicals and building materials. The company’s three industry-leading business segments—Grace Catalysts Technologies, Grace Materials Technologies, and Grace Construction Products—provide innovative products, technologies, and services that improve the products and processes of customer partners in over 155 countries around the world. Grace’s 2014 net sales were $3.2 billion. More information about Grace is available at grace.com.

This news release contains forward-looking statements, that is, information related to future, not past, events. Such statements generally include the words “believes,” “plans,” “intends,” “targets,” “will,” “expects,” “suggests,” “anticipates,” “outlook,” “continues” or similar expressions. Forward-looking statements include, without limitation, expected financial positions; results of operations; cash flows; financing plans; business strategy; operating plans; capital and other expenditures; competitive positions; growth opportunities for existing products; benefits from new technology and cost reduction initiatives, plans and objectives; and markets for securities. For these statements, Grace and the Company claim the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements contained in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Like other businesses, GCP is subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause its actual results to differ materially from its projections or that could cause other forward-looking statements to prove incorrect. Factors that could cause actual results to materially differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements include, without limitation, risks related to: the cyclical and seasonal nature of the industries GCP serves; the effectiveness of GCP's research and development and new product introductions; the cost and availability of raw materials and energy; foreign operations, especially in emerging regions; changes in currency exchange rates; developments affecting the Company’s outstanding liquidity and indebtedness, including debt covenants and interest rate exposure; developments affecting the Company’s funded and unfunded pension obligations; acquisitions and divestitures of assets and gains and losses from dispositions; warranty and product liability claims; hazardous materials and costs of environmental compliance; the separation, such as: uncertainties that may delay or negatively impact the separation and distribution or cause the separation and distribution to not occur at all, the Company’s lack of history as a public company and the costs of the separation, the Company’s ability to realize the anticipated benefits of the separation and distribution, and the value of GCP common stock following the separation; and those additional factors set forth in this news release and W. R. Grace & Co.’s most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly report on Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K which have been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and are readily available on the Internet at www.sec.gov.

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