Over the weekend, Syngenta Media Relations sent out a press release announcing that Chen Lichtenstein, current President/CEO of ADAMA, will become the new CFO of Syngenta. One part of this notice, writes Eric Sfiligoj at CropLife, included this sentence: “ChemChina and Sinochem announced that they are consolidating their agricultural assets into a new holding company that will be called Syngenta Group.”
And with that, the long-rumored merger of two of China’s largest crop protection/seed/fertilizer companies has become a reality. According to observers, the new business entity will have sales of more than $100 billion and be listed on the Chinese technology-focused STAR market by mid-year.
For those in the agricultural market, this combination of ChemChina and Sinochem probably comes as no surprise. Indeed, back in summer 2018, many people were already speculating such a deal was in the works as Sinochem executives began populating the ChemChina board of directors (although both companies denied that this was the case at the time).