But by the time the deal was announced Tuesday, they already had given most of it away.

The couple earlier this week transferred Huntsman stock expected to be worth about $600 million to their charitable foundation to help further their efforts to find a cure for cancer and eliminate suffering throughout the world. More money is to come.

''I've said all along that the end game was not to build and [continue to] run a business, but to find a cure for cancer and alleviate the suffering it causes,'' said Jon Huntsman, a prostate and mouth cancer survivor who serves as the chairman of the Salt Lake City-based chemicals company founded by him and still bearing his name.

Huntsman Corp. said Tuesday it agreed to be acquired by the Basell subsidiary of Access Industries Holdings, a New York-based conglomerate headed by Russian-born American industrialist Len Blavatnik.

The purchase price: $9.6 billion, including about $5.9 billion in cash and $3.7 billion in Huntsman corporate debt that Basell intends to assume.

Huntsman shareholders will receive $25.25 for each share of stock they own, or 9.8 percent more than the $23 investors paid for the company's shares when it went public in Feb. 2005.

''If you had asked me three weeks ago if we would be at this point [announcing a sale] I would have given an emphatic 'No,' '' said Peter Huntsman, the company's chief executive and son of its founder. "We are getting a fair price for the company, though, and we have to do what is in the best interests of our shareholders."

Peter Huntsman said he will continue to serve as president and chief executive of Huntsman Corp. under new ownership.

His father will continue to serve as chairman.

The sale stemmed from an unsolicited offer to buy the company with headquarters in Salt Lake City and Texas from a private equity firm about a month ago. As part of the process of weighing that offer, Huntsman contacted other potential buyers.

"We talked to everyone who had ever expressed an interest, including companies in India, the Middle East and China, " Peter Huntsman said. "Basell was the one that stepped forward."

The decision to accept Basell's offer was driven by MatlinPatterson, a investment firm that held a sizeable interest in Huntsman Corp.

"They are a company that generally likes to hold an investment for about five years and they were starting to look for a way out," Peter Huntsman said.

He added, "My father turned 70 last week and my parents were eager to move forward with providing additional funding for their foundations. And they didn't want to be directing that [funding] from the grave."

Basell is one of the world's largest producers of commodity chemicals - the basic building blocks for plastics, solvents and other petrochemicals. Like Huntsman Corp., it has facilities worldwide.

"Our acquisition of Huntsman will help us expand the noncommodity aspects of our business," Basell spokesman Nick Nagurny said.

Basell is following the opposite tactic to the one Huntsman's management embarked upon in recent years as it tried to boost the value of the Utah company for its shareholders. Since going public, Huntsman sold off its commodity chemicals assets to focus on its specialty products such as pigments and solvents, which were less subject to the volatile swings of raw materials used in their production.

"In effect, this acquisition [by Basell] will create the kind of petrochemical/speciality hybrid that Huntsman dismantled by selling its [commodity] businesses," said Laurence Alexander, a securities analyst who follows the chemicals industry for Jefferies & Co., New York.

HSBC securities analyst Hassan Ahmed said the purchase represents a good deal for Huntsman's shareholders, many of whom he believes have grown frustrated with the lack of performance of the company's shares.

Since going public there was only a brief period when the company's shares traded above its offering price, Ahmed said.

"With all respect to Peter and Jon, they did what they could to try [to] improve the company's share price. They shed debt and sold assets, but the market again and again shrugged it off and the stock kept trading under the IPO price," he said. "Now they have Access International as a ready buyer, which appears very good for shareholders since I believe they are overpaying for the company, possibly quite a bit."

In total, the Huntsman family will receive about $1.5 billion - a figure that includes the $1 billion that will go to Jon and Karen Huntsman - after the transaction closes, which is expected sometime in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. will not benefit directly from the sale, said his spokeswoman, Lisa Roskelley.

Jon Huntsman Jr., who was elected governor in November 2004, reported that in early 2005 he sold his 1 percent of shares of the family-owned Huntsman Corp. for $15 million to $25 million. He divested his 600,000 shares of stock soon after the company's February 2005 public offering.

At the time, the governor said he never expected to benefit financially from his share in the company his father had been building since the son was a youngster. "Nobody could have told you two or three years ago what would happen. I wasn't much prepared for this," he said.

The governor divested because he wanted to be above any appearance of impropriety, his then-chief of staff Jason Chaffetz explained. "It's just the right thing to do."

Jon Huntsman Jr. put the money into a blind trust to be used in part to pay for the college educations of his seven children.

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* GLEN WARCHOL contributed to this report.