On December 11th, 2015, DuPont and The Dow Chemical Company, two of the largest chemical companies in American, have announced that they will combine in an all-stock merger of equals. The combined company will be named DowDuPont which will become the largest chemical company in the world and have a combined market capitalization of approximately $120 billion. This is the largest merger transaction in the global chemical industry up to now.
Under the terms of the transaction, DuPont shareholders will receive a fixed exchange ratio of 1.282 shares in DowDuPont for each DuPont share and Dow shareholders will receive a fixed exchange ratio of 1.00 share of DowDuPont for each Dow share. Dow and DuPont shareholders will each own approximately 50 percent of the combined company.
Andrew Liveris, CEO of Dow, will become Chairman of the newly formed DowDuPont and Ed Breen, CEO of DuPont, will become Chief Executive Officer of DowDuPont.
“This transaction is a game-changer for our industry and reflects the culmination of a vision we have had for more than a decade to bring together these two powerful innovation and material science leaders,” said Andrew N. Liveris, Dow’s chairman and chief executive officer. The parties intend to subsequently pursue a separation of DowDuPont into three independent, publicly traded companies, respectively concentrating on agricultural products, material products and specialty products.