DuPont and Dow Chemical Company, two of the leading materials suppliers to the solar industry, have successfully completed a merger after more than 18 months of discussions.
The new company is called DowDuPont and will eventually break up into three publicly-traded divisions – agriculture, materials science, and specialty products – that will stratify and streamline the various businesses, expertise and operations that now fall under the DowDuPont umbrella.
The U.S.-headquartered firms have between them been two of the leading suppliers of backsheets, encapsulants and metallization pastes within the solar industry, and their proposed merger was first announced in December 2015.
This $130 billion ‘merger of equals’ was labelled at the time as a “deal of three centuries”, bringing together many years of knowledge, more latterly focused on solar PV technology.
Each of the three new divisions are expected to be able to allocate capital more effectively, and apply innovations in a more timely and targeted manner, a company press release stated. Shares of DuPont and Dow ceased trading on August 31, with DowDuPont – operating under the stock ticker symbol DWDP – commencing trading on September 2.
DowDuPont executive chairman Andrew Liveris called the merger a significant milestone, adding: “The true value of this merger lies in the intended creation of three industry powerhouses that will define their markets and drive growth for the benefit of all stakeholders. Our teams have been working for more than a year on integration planning and we will hit the ground running.”
The new, 16-strong board of directors has been split equitably between former Dow and DuPont staff, while the three divisions will all be headquartered in the U.S. – agriculture in Wilmington, Delaware; materials science in Midland, Michigan; and the specialty products also in Wilmington, Delaware.
Currently, it is unclear how exactly DowDuPont will apportion its solar PV-focused industries, although it was confirmed that the Materials Science Company would be named Dow.
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Does nobody care about monopoly power any more? Rhetorical question, the answer has been “no” for some time. There must be hundreds, perhaps thousands, of chemicals and related products for which Dupont and DKW were already effectively the sole suppliers. Now there will be many more.