ChemChina to acquire Syngenta

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), whose mandate is USA national security, would not pose a major hurdle, Ramsay said.

It said 2015 sales totaled $13.4 billion, down 11 percent in actual exchange rates due to US dollar strength from the previous year.

On Wednesday, Syngenta reported full year earnings marred by what it said were low crop prices, emerging market instability and “massive” movements in currencies.

The price for shares would be 100% in cash, said Michel Demaré, board chairman, in a video.

Syngenta has a crop-protection manufacturing facility in Louisiana, a crop genetics research facility in North Carolina and a diversified chemical formulating facility in Omaha, Nebraska, with more than 2 million gallons of chemical storage. “Syngenta will maintain its identity, its strategy and its capabilities and we will continue to look to serve interests of agriculture around the world”.

Syngenta is a key producer of genetically modified seeds and that expertise could help China increase food production and reduce pesticide use. “This is a government attempting to address a real problem”.

The World Bank estimates that China’s arable land declined 6 percent in the past decade as economic growth boomed. “It’s likely we’ll see further deals of a similar magnitude in the next few years”.

“The Chinese have relied mainly on traditional ways of farming”.

But Ren, 57, is also a different breed; a dapper executive in an open shirt, aggressively pursuing some of the world’s biggest names as he builds up a company he started in 1984 as an industrial cleaning venture with a 10,000 yuan ($1,520 at today’s rates) government loan.

If completed, ChemChina’s Syngenta purchase would be more than double CNOOC’s US$17.7 billion buy of Canadian energy company Nexen in 2012.

Swiss agrochemical company Syngenta has been bought by chemicals giant ChemChina in a deal worth $43 billion (CHF43.8 billion), the Basel-based company has announced.

“In making this offer, ChemChina is recognizing the quality and potential of Syngenta’s business”, said Syngenta chairman Michel Demaré.

“I think the overall regulatory approvals will not be very challenging”, Ramsay told Reuters, adding he expected antitrust regulators to acknowledge the limited overlap.

Ramsay said the deal was “very appropriate and attractive” to Syngenta shareholders, but its board would have to consider any rival offers.

Syngenta was advised by Dyalco, the one-man business of former Goldman Sachs M&A head Gordon Dyal, alongside JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and UBS while HSBC and China CITIC Bank International advised ChemChina.

Behind the biggest-ever foreign acquisition by a Chinese firm is one of the most daunting challenges the country faces: it must secure its food supply and feed 1.5 billion people despite a shortage of viable farmland.