Aug. 6--The landmark Rohm & Haas Co. headquarters building on Independence Mall is for sale, and more than 100 employees there have been told their jobs will end later this month. Many more will follow.

Around the globe, Dow Chemical Co. -- which with great reluctance was forced to complete its purchase of Rohm & Haas for $15.7 billion -- is shopping its businesses, factories, and refineries to raise cash.

The pressing goal: deleveraging the Dow Chemical balance sheet. Dow's debt to bondholders and banks almost doubled to $23.8 billion in its most recent quarter, the first with Rohm & Haas under its belt.

Interest payments and special dividend payments soared 342 percent to $667 million for the second quarter.

"We are working as hard as we can to meet our milestones," Dow spokesman Bob Plishka said yesterday.

Seven months ago, Dow Chemical feared banks could seize control of the company if it was forced to close on its acquisition of Rohm & Haas, a 100-year-old specialty-chemical company. The Dow-Rohm deal was announced in the summer of 2008, just before the economy spun out of control.

Dow attorney David Bernick, who was retained to wage the legal fight against Rohm & Haas purchase, gloomily predicted that Dow Chemical would be "hobbled financially."

There would be "no light at the end of the tunnel" for the 60,000 employees in Dow-Rohm, Bernick told Delaware Judge William B. Chandler 3d and Rohm & Haas attorneys during the court battle.

Dow eventually agreed to a court settlement and the rancorous deal closed April 1.

The statistics disclosed Friday in its second-quarter financial report were grim. Dow Chemical reported that sales fell 31 percent to $11.3 billion when compared with a year earlier. Dow's losses attributed to common stockholders were $486 million, mostly because of restructuring charges.

But Dow says there is cause for hope. Dow Chemical chief executive officer Andrew Liveris said that manufacturing trends were improving and that the recession might have bottomed out. Dow is one of the world's largest manufacturers of basic plastics, in addition to many other products, including herbicides.

Bill Selesky, an equity analyst with Argus Research Corp., of New York, said Dow's stock price had rebounded because of the popularity of basic materials stocks and confidence on Wall Street that Dow will not collapse.

Dow's stock fell to $6.33 March 9, the day before it reached the court settlement to close the Rohm & Haas deal. The stock closed yesterday at $23.64.

Dow's debt, Selesky said, remains a big concern.