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Post Dow-DuPont, chemical deal-making waned as 2016 advanced
A few big chemical deals were inked during the year, but it was hardly the frenzy observers were expecting
by Alexander H. Tullo
December 14, 2016
| A version of this story appeared in
Volume 94, Issue 49
Sources: Thomson Reuters, New York Times
Sources: Thomson Reuters, New York Times
After Dow Chemical and DuPont announced plans to merge in late 2015, chemical industry watchers predicted that the year ahead would bring an unprecedented blizzard of deal-making.
Speaking before the IHS World Petrochemical Conference in March, Scott Kleinman, lead partner for private equity at Apollo Global Management, was certain that big companies would keep buying each other.
“I think you are going to see deals you thought would never happen happen this year,” Kleinman concluded.
There were indeed copycat deals. ChemChina launched its acquisition of Syngenta in February. In May, Bayer was making overtures, not consummated until September, for Monsanto.
However, by the third quarter, merger and acquisition activity had cooled. According to the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), 23 transactions were announced in the chemical industry during the July–September quarter, a decline of 47% versus the quarter before.
PwC blames uncertainty. “We saw deal-makers take a pause, anxiously waiting for the Fed’s decision on interest rates and the outcome of the U.S. presidential election,” the firm said in an October report.
C&EN's YEAR IN REVIEW
Top Headlines of 2016
- Hawaii explosion cost a researcher an arm
- TSCA reform crossed the finish line
- U.S. elected Trump as president
- The periodic table got four new elements
- Post Dow-DuPont, chemical deal-making waned as 2016 advanced
- Labs made advances in Zika research
- Four ag giants to rule them all
- 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry at a glance
- Brexit bomb exploded
- Focus returned to Iran's chemical industry
- Overtime pay limit doubles under Obama administration
- The CRISPR craze continued
- Perfluorinated compounds got increased scrutiny
- From the lab to the market
- Paris Agreement to curb climate change took off
- World chemical production at a glance
- Flint's water woes lingered
- As China's economy slowed, chemical makers adjusted
- Mostafa A. El-Sayed won the 2016 Priestley Medal
- ACS members on average fared better than young graduates in employment surveys
- ACS invests internationally
- Spun-off firms found their footing in 2016
- Remembering the Nobel laureates we lost in 2016
- ACS proposed chemistry preprint server
- Berkeley College of Chemistry avoided reorganization
- Fight against opioid epidemic continued in 2016
- Noble gas shortages averted, for now
- The shale gas boom by the numbers
- Crop protection products in the crosshairs
- ACS launched new journals
- Website search terms of the year
- Biobased materials hit the big time
- No better deal emerged for Mossville, La.
- U.S. prepares for national food labeling standard
Top Research of 2016
- Mini factory made drugs on demand
- World's first PET-munching microbe discovered
- Liquid metals went to work
- Methylene activation reached new heights
- Biological structures of the year
- Wearable sensors were 'the' fashion accessories of 2016
- Scientists beefed up the antibiotic arsenal
- An enzymatic route to carbon-silicon bonds
- Single-atom catalysts gained a toehold
Revisiting Research of 2006
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