As Mergers Magnify Complexities, Smaller Companies Can Benefit

摘要

2017 BEGAN AS IT WILL PROBABLY END: with talk of mergers. Aside from the three crop protectionmega-mergers announced in 2015 and 2016, there are now more to "chew over."Although not official, ChemChina and Sinochem are planning to merge next year, creating one of the world's largest chemical groups with $100 billion in revenue. All this before the ink has even dried on the regulators' approval of ChemChina's $43-billionpurchase of Syngenta. But the "merger world" is larger than just crop protection and seed, and the driving forces for consolidation (including the now famous commodity prices) continue down the chain into the supply industry and the traders, to name just Agrium/Potash Corp. and Glencore/Bunge.