Senate Committee to Hold Hearings on Proposed Agricultural Mergers

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Just days after the announcement of the proposed $66 billion merger between agricultural giants Bayer AG (Leverkusen, Germany) and Monsanto Company (NYSE:MON) (St. Louis, Missouri), the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee will meet this week over concerns about how this and other large mergers will impact the agricultural sector. The merger that instigated the meeting was the $130 billion tie-up between Dow Chemical Company (NYSE:DOW) (Midland, Michigan) and E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (NYSE:DD) (DuPont) (Wilmington, Delaware).

The meeting was brought about by U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee. "The seed and chemical industries are critical to agriculture and the nation's economy, and Iowans are concerned that this sudden consolidation in the industry could cause rising input costs in an already declining agricultural economy," said Grassley in an August 23 statement. Witnesses from Bayer, Monsanto, Dow and DuPont will be present at the hearing.

Hearings such as this one in front of the entire Judiciary Committee are not the norm: Generally a subcommittee holds such meetings. Regardless of the outcome, the committee can act only in an advisory position to the U.S. Justice Department, which holds the ultimate fate of such mega-mergers in its hands.

Dow and DuPont had hoped to complete their merger, which was announced in December, by the end of this year. However, these plans may have hit a snag earlier this month when the European Union's antitrust regulator suspended its deadline for a review of the merger to January 11, because the companies had not submitted required information. About 18 to 24 months after the merger is complete, the new company, known as DowDupont, would split into three businesses: Material Sciences, which would be headquartered in Midland, Michingan, and Agricultural and Specialty Products, both of which would be headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware. For more information on the Dow-DuPont merger, see December 14, 2015, article - Dow-DuPont Mega-Merger to Have Widespread Impact. For more details on the proposed Bayer-Monsanto merger, see September 15, 2016, article - Bayer-Monsanto Merger Encompasses $3.25 Billion of Projects.

Industrial Info is tracking $8 billion of Dow and DuPont projects and $3.25 billion of Monsanto and Bayer projects. One of the larger projects being tracked by Industrial Info that belongs to one of these four companies is Monsanto's planned expansion of its herbicides plant in Luling, Louisiana. The $975 million project is planned to kick off next summer and take about two years to complete. A maintenance turnaround is expected at the plant during the fourth quarter of this year.

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