Happy Groundhog Day!
My name is Alex Tullo. I am a senior correspondent with the Northeast News Bureau at Chemical & Engineering News. I have been reporting on the chemical industry for C&EN since 1999. I have headed C&EN’s coverage of DuPont’s merger with Dow Chemical since this deal was unveiled in December and have had particular focus on the impact this deal will have on research. This merger surprised the chemical world. Both companies together, when the merger was announced, combined for a market capitalization of $130 billion. No previous chemical deal had ever even topped $20 billion in value. The new DowDuPont will generate an estimated $83 billion in annual sales, second only among chemical makers to BASF.
This company won’t last for long. In about two years after its formation, management plans to break DowDuPont apart into three firms. One company will combine Dow’s and DuPont’s complementary businesses in seeds and crop protection chemicals. Another, likely headquartered in Midland, Mich., like Dow, will focus on plastics and other materials. A third, specialty products company, will be based in Wilmington, Del., like DuPont, and will have a portfolio of electronic materials and other value-added products.
The merger has already had an impact on research. Last month, DuPont shut down its famous Central R&D unit and is rolling it up into a much smaller organization called “Science and Innovation.” Observers saw this as a culmination of a trend at big corporations away from exploratory research in chemistry and towards more business oriented discovery.
I’ll be back at 11:00 a.m. EST (8 am PST, 4 pm UTC) to start answering questions.
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