, Columnist
China’s Giant Crop Takeover Has Failed. Time to Admit It
There’s a way to salvage the $46 billion purchase of agrochemical giant Syngenta.
Not all plantings yield a bumper harvest.
Photographer: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg
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There comes a point where you have to stop throwing good money after bad.
That moment is already well past for Sinochem Corp. and China National Chemical Corp., or ChemChina, the state-owned Chinese giants that have been edging toward a merger for four years. The two chemicals companies are working on a structure that would allow them to combine without triggering a fresh round of foreign-ownership investigations over their Swiss-based Syngenta unit, the Wall Street Journal reported this week.