Dow Chemical and DuPont Plan Huge Merger Followed By a Split (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Two of the largest and oldest chemical companies, Dow and DuPont, have planned a merger. Dow's 53,000 employees will join forces with DuPont's 63,000 employees, which will challenge Germany's BASF for the biggest chemical company in the world. Not for long, though — once the merger is complete, they will split up into three. One will focus on agriculture, one on materials science, and one on specialty products. According to the press release, it will indeed be a merger of equals, with both companies comprising 50% of the new DowDuPont behemoth. "Despite the eventual breakup, the deal would undergo rigorous antitrust scrutiny for all three companies, particularly the agricultural chemicals company. Still, the companies did not expect that the deal would require much in the way of other divestitures to satisfy regulators' concerns."

Comments

Re:Clearly anti-competive but no regulator concern

[thegarbz]

Are the regulators that corrupt?

Regulators don't exist to prevent companies from getting big, they exist to prevent companies from anti-competitive practices. That is very much up to general market conditions, market power and the actions of a company. All of this is helped by the fact that their competitor after the merger-split will still be larger than they are.

So while yes, regulators are likely corrupt just like a politician is likely lying somewhere in the world right now, it doesn't actually have much to do with the situation at hand.