ChemChina offered commitments to address concerns
By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com
The European Commission (EC), the European Union’s (EU) top regulatory agency, conditionally approved the US$43 billion acquisition of Syngenta by ChemChina.
The approval is conditional on ChemChina's commitment to divest itself of parts of its European pesticide and plant growth regulator businesses.
The commitments offered by ChemChina to satisfy EC’s conditions include divesting:
- Some of Syngenta’s vegetable fungicides and cereal herbicides,
- 29 of Adama’s (an Israeli manufacturer and distributor of crop protection products acquired by ChemChina in 2011) generic pesticides under development, and
- What the EC called a “significant part” of Adama’s existing pesticide business
The EC said meeting these conditions can help sustain competition within the pesticide industry.
"It is important for European farmers and ultimately consumers that there will be effective competition in pesticide markets, also after ChemChina's acquisition of Syngenta,” Margrethe Vestager commissioner of the EC, said in a release. “ChemChina has offered significant remedies, which fully address our competition concerns. This has allowed us to approve the transaction.”
ChemChina and Syngenta suggested the transaction could close in the second quarter of 2017, a joint statement said.
“(The acquisition) will ensure continued choice and ongoing innovation for growers in Europe and around the world.”
The EC’s decision on ChemChina and Syngenta comes two weeks after it cleared the DowDuPont merger.