Dow Chemical Co.’s chief executive officer told Bloomberg that the $59 billion merger with DuPont Co. may be delayed until February from a planned closing late this year, as European antitrust officials take more time to consider potential competition issues in pesticides and crop seeds.
Regulators’ “greatest concern is agriculture,” Dow’s Andrew Liveris said Monday in an interview with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait in New York. “One of the strongest lobbies in the world out there is the farm lobby, and in Europe, the agricultural sector is very, very critical to them, somewhat protected.”
Shareholders in the two largest U.S. chemical companies approved the 50-50 merger in June and Dow Chief Financial Officer Howard Ungerleider said in July that the merger was on track to close by the end of the year, Bloomberg reported. The European Commission this month delayed its decision deadline until Feb. 6 as it sought additional information about the transaction. Liveris said the value created by the deal made the wait worthwhile.
“That’s worth a few months of delay,” he said in the interview to Bloomberg.
DuPont CEO Ed Breen on Tuesday said he now expects the deal to close by the end of March.
“We continue to work constructively with regulators in key jurisdictions to close the merger as soon as possible,” Breen said in the company’s third-quarter earnings statement. “In the event that regulators in those jurisdictions use their full allotted time, closing would be expected to occur in the first quarter of 2017.”
