Syngenta-ChemChina deal faces delay

Although considerable progress has been made on the regulatory front concerning ChemChina’s $43 billion acquisition of Syngenta, the transaction now is not expected to close by the end of the year, said Erik Fyrwald, chief executive officer of Syngenta.

“We achieved national security clearance from CFIUS in the U.S. and anti-trust clearance from a total of 11 regulatory authorities,” Fyrwald said during an Oct. 25 conference call with analysts.

“The key outstanding anti-trust approvals are the E.U., for which we filed on Sept. 23, and the U.S., where we are ready to file, subject to updated feedback from the FTC, which is expected in the coming days.”

One of the issues causing the delay is Bayer AG’s pending $66 billion acquisition of Monsanto Co. The Bayer-Monsanto deal was announced in mid-September, and since that time regulators have requested “a large amount of additional information,” Fyrwald said.

I've been following issues relating to Syngenta for some time. We are in the business of selling certified wheat seed (on very small local scale).

And the state of Texas and Syngenta made a partnership a few years ago that prompted my family to make a decision to change suppliers of seed. We had always used Texas A&M varieties but saw how Syngenta operated and decided we would quit the business if that was the only option.

Syngenta hired the best breeders from K State and Texas A&M and assumed the function of legal enforcement for both K-State and Texas A&M. In return Syngenta and both Universities received money for research and the Ag Extension function. All that accomplished was to push up the regulatory cost and state fees on to the price of planting seed.

Recently the state of Texas doubled and trippled the fees associated with seed licensing and inspection. They also did the same thing to the fees for the weights and measure function.

We had an almost total crop failure this year and saved none of the seed we did harvest for sale. The price of wheat at harvest was about $2.75 per bushel.

It is a train wreck of Bureaucrap proportions. When the final acquisition of Syngenta is concluded (estimate in 1st or 2nd Quarter of 2017) what will the price of wheat actually be?

How many farmers will survive this global concentration of ag chemical products and seed sources?

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