Starboard, in its letter to Corteva’s chairman, said it had identified someone new for the top job, but declined to name the person.

Corteva’s chairman Greg Page said the board unanimously backed CEO Jim Collins.

The agricultural supplier said while it agreed with many points raised by Starboard, the activist investor had not discussed with the company the specific operational recommendations on how to improve performance.

“We believe we are at an important inflection point in our company’s trajectory as the extensive investments we have made to enhance productivity over the last 18 plus months will begin to accelerate their impact on earnings,” Page said.

Starboard CEO Jeffrey Smith last year criticized Corteva’s financial performance, noting its cash flow margin of 14.4 per cent lags behind peers and that the share price could be closer to US$55.

Corteva’s shares, which had risen 1.3 per cent in early trading, fell about 2.5 per cent to US$42.57.

The company, like other agricultural suppliers, has struggled in recent years as excess grain supplies have hurt crop prices and low farmer incomes have made it tough for companies to raise prices for pesticides or seeds.

Corteva, which spun out of industrial conglomerate DowDupont in 2019, has shut down some facilities and recently said it would look to cut some more costs due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Starboard is known for its operational know-how and often proposes to add new directors to a company’s board. It had won 17 board seats at four companies in the first half of 2020.

The activist investor owns 11.7 million shares, or a 1.6 per cent stake, in Corteva, according to Refinitiv Eikon data.

— Reporting for Reuters by Arathy S Nair in Bangalore.

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The Delaware-based agribusiness, under the name Corteva, Inc., is scheduled to begin “when-issued” trading on the NYSE on May 24, and “regular way” trading on June 3, under the ticker symbol “CTVA.”

DowDuPont — the holding company formed in 2017 by the merger of Dow and DuPont — announced Wednesday that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has declared Corteva’s registration statement effective, and that the DowDuPont board of directors has approved Corteva’s spinoff.

“This milestone marks the completion of all the regulatory requirements for us to separate into a leading pure-play independent agriculture company on June 1,” Corteva CEO James Collins said in a release.

“Corteva Agriscience is well positioned to drive long-term value for shareholders as we leverage our balanced portfolio and robust innovation pipeline to deliver the complete solution farmers need to maximize yield and profitability,”

The spinoff calls for each current shareholder in DowDuPont to receive one share of Corteva common stock for every three shares of DowDuPont common stock they hold.

DowDuPont on June 1 will also rename itself DuPont de Nemours, Inc., doing business under the name DuPont.

The new DuPont will operate the two companies’ combined specialty chemical product operations. Dow and DuPont’s combined materials science divisions, which were spun off in March, now operate under the Dow name.

Corteva’s operations in Canada include seeds, sold under the Pioneer and Brevant brand names, with herbicide-tolerant trait systems including Enlist, Optimum GLY, SmartStax and, since February, Clearfield.

Corteva’s roster of crop protection chemicals in the Canadian market includes, among others, herbicides such as Enlist Duo, Lontrel, Frontline, Grazon and Tordon; insecticides such as Lorsban and Delegate; seed treatments such as Lumiderm, Lumisena and Lumivia; and fungicides such as Acapela and Nova.

Worldwide, the Corteva agriculture segments have booked combined annual net sales of over US$14 billion in recent years. Their combined EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) for 2018 came in at US$2.05 billion. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Shares of the new division, Dow, will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday.

Dow and Dupont completed a US$130 billion merger in 2017 to form DowDuPont and had outlined a plan to create three separately traded companies focusing on agriculture, plastics and specialty products.

Corteva, the agriculture unit, is set to separate from the new specialty chemical maker DuPont on June 1.

— Reporting for Reuters by John Benny in Bangalore.

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Warren, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts and a fierce Wall Street critic, released a broad plan that she said would make it easier for small farmers to survive in the face of growing corporate consolidation in the rural economy.

She singled out several big agriculture corporations, naming Tyson Foods, Bayer-Monsanto and Dow-DuPont, and said the Bayer-Monsanto merger should not have been approved. Under her plan, regulators would review “anti-competitive” agricultural mergers and break up integrated businesses that control many different levels of the farming chain and markets.

“We can make better policy choices  – and we can begin by leveling the playing field for America’s family farmers,” Warren wrote in a Medium blog post outlining her proposal.

Warren released the plan ahead of a campaign trip to Iowa, a farm state that kicks off the Democratic presidential nominating contest in February 2020. During her visit, she will participate in a Democratic policy forum on rural issues as the party searches for ways to reverse Republican President Donald Trump’s win over Democrat Hillary Clinton in rural areas in 2016.

Earlier this month, Warren also proposed breaking up big tech companies such as Amazon, Google and Facebook to promote competition in the technology sector. She has made her populist economic message the heart of her campaign in a growing Democratic field of contenders, arguing the economy is rigged for corporations and the wealthy.

“Bad decisions in Washington have consistently favoured the interests of multinational corporations and big business lobbyists over the interests of family farmers,” Warren said in her agricultural proposal.

“Mergers mean that farmers have fewer and fewer choices for buying and selling, while vertical integration has meant that big agribusinesses face less competition throughout the chain and thus capture more and more of the profits,” she said.

Warren’s plan also would end “contract farming” by conglomerates, create a national right-to-repair law that allows farmers to repair their own equipment or take it to a mechanic of their choice instead of an authorized agent, and establish country-of-origin rules to require beef and pork producers to label where their livestock was raised and slaughtered.

— John Whitesides is a Reuters political correspondent in Washington, D.C.

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In an order on Wednesday, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it will again review former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s March 2017 refusal to ban chlorpyrifos for use on food crops such as fruits, vegetables and nuts.

Pruitt’s ruling reversed a 2015 Obama administration plan to extend a 2000 ban on the pesticide that had covered most household settings.

The appeals court had, in a 2-1 decision last Aug. 9, directed the EPA to ban chlorpyrifos within 60 days.

It cited the agency’s failure to consider, or debunk, “scientific evidence” associating the pesticide with low birth rates, impaired mental development, attention and behaviour problems, and other damage to children.

Wednesday’s order means an 11-judge appeals court panel will reconsider the case.

Chlorpyrifos has been used commercially in the U.S. and in Canada since 1965. The ingredient remains registered in Canada where it’s sold under the Corteva Agriscience brand Lorsban, among others.

Groups that challenged Pruitt’s ruling included the Natural Resources Defense Council and the United Farm Workers.

“EPA’s own scientists have said for more than two years that chlorpyrifos is harmful, particularly to children,” said Patti Goldman, a lawyer for Earthjustice representing the groups, in a statement. “Any delay to ban this toxic chemical is a tragedy.”

If the Ninth Circuit upholds Pruitt’s original ruling, it will be a win for President Donald Trump, who along with other Republicans has long criticized what is widely viewed as one of the more liberal federal appeals courts.

In seeking a rehearing, the EPA said the appeals court lacked jurisdiction to review Pruitt’s ruling, and otherwise should have simply directed him to reconsider the evidence rather than order a ban.

The EPA is now overseen by acting administrator Andrew Wheeler.

A spokeswoman said the agency is pleased the case will be reheard, and that federal rules allowing the pesticide’s use “can continue, as permitted by state law,” during the appeals process.

Judge Jed Rakoff, who normally sits on the federal district court in Manhattan, wrote the Aug. 9 decision.

Circuit Judge Ferdinand Fernandez dissented, saying the court lacked jurisdiction.

— Jonathan Stempel is a Reuters correspondent covering federal and state courts and regulators from New York.

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DowDuPont announced Monday the agribusiness, which will include DuPont Crop Protection, DuPont Pioneer and Dow AgroSciences, will rebrand as Corteva Agriscience after its spinoff, expected by June 1 next year.

The name, to be pronounced coreTAYvah, combines cor and teva, a Latin root word for “heart” and a Hebrew word for “nature” respectively.

The company, which closed on their merger deal in September, unveiled the ag division’s name and logo Monday at the Commodity Classic farm trade show in Anaheim.

The company earlier this month unveiled a combined premium seed brand, Brevant, which will replace the Dow Seeds brand in Canada and some countries in Europe and the Coodetec and Biogene brands in Brazil this year.

The Corteva brand “acknowledges our history while looking forward to our commitment to enhancing farmer productivity as well as the health and well-being of the consumers they serve,” James Collins Jr., the agriculture division’s chief operating officer, said in a release.

DowDuPont billed Corteva on Monday as “a market-shaping, standalone agriculture company with leading positions in seed technologies, crop protection and digital agriculture.”

Corteva, Collins said, will “continue to invest in some of the most recognized and premium brands in agriculture: Pioneer, Mycogen, and the newly launched Brevant seed brands, as well as our award-winning crop protection products, such as Aproach Prima fungicide and Quelex herbicide with Arylex active, while bringing new products to market through our solid pipeline of active chemistry and technologies.”

Corteva’s corporate headquarters, DowDuPont previously announced, will be in Wilmington, Delaware, with “global business centres” in Johnston, Iowa, and in Indianapolis.

The two sites in the Midwest are expected to serve as homes for the bulk of Corteva’s “leadership of business lines, business support functions, R+D, global supply chain, and sales and marketing capabilities.”

Apart from its ag business, DowDuPont also announced Monday its materials science division, when spun off, will be branded as Dow, with the Dow diamond as its logo. The specialty products division, when spun off, will go with the DuPont brand. — AGCanada.com Network

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The newly-combined company, formed by the merger of chemical giants Dow Chemical and DuPont four months ago, said its net sales came in at $20.1 billion versus comparable net sales – which the company terms “proforma” sales – of $17.7 billion a year earlier (all figures US$).

It also said it planned to move ahead with plans to split the new company into three separate parts, starting with the Materials Science unit by the end of the first quarter of 2019. Agriculture and Specialty Products are expected to follow by June 1, 2019.

The chemicals giant saw prices rise by about five per cent across markets in the fourth quarter, while volumes — a proxy for demand — rose six per cent.

“In developed economies in particular, such as the United States, Germany, France, Canada and the U.K., we continue to see strong leading indicators of broad-based growth,” executive chairman Andrew Liveris said in the results statement.

“Furthermore, early signs from the business community point to U.S. tax reform as a catalyst for further domestic capital investments.”

Currently trading at a market value of about $176.9 billion, Dow and DuPont completed the $130 billion mega-merger in September. That created the world’s largest chemical maker, until the company goes through with a plan to split into three companies.

DowDuPont’s merger was welcomed by investors as a way to streamline the companies’ sprawling operations by combining overlapping businesses.

The company said on Thursday it was now planning to save $3.3 billion in costs on the back of the merger — slightly more than the $3 billion it expected to save earlier.

For the reported quarter DowDuPont saw a $1.1 billion benefit from lower U.S corporate taxes, but still posted a net loss of $1.2 billion from continuing operations — substantially the result of merger-related costs.

Adjusted for those and other one time effects, the company said it earned 83 cents on a share. Ahead of the numbers Wall Street was expecting it to make 67 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S numbers.

Shares of the company dipped to $75 in premarket trading on Thursday compared to the previous close of $75.58.

— Reporting for Reuters by Nivedita Bhattacharjee.

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The preliminary ruling by an administrative court in the city of Nice overturned a decision by France’s health and environment agency ANSES in September to grant a permit for the Closer and Transform crop chemicals, which contain the insecticide sulfoxaflor.

ANSES’s authorization of the products angered environmental protection groups, which say they are part of the neonicotinoid family of substances that are being phased out in France because of concern they could be a factor in declining bee populations.

ANSES argued that while sulfoxaflor functioned in a similar way to neonicotinoids, it remains present in soils and plants for a much shorter time.

Friday’s ruling suspends the use of the products in France pending a court hearing to consider detailed arguments from the parties.

Dow AgroSciences SAS, a French subsidiary of the U.S. group, said it planned to appeal the ruling before France’s top administrative court.

“We find this ruling extremely surprising,” Benoit Dattin, communications manager at Dow AgroSciences, said.

“Our products have a very favourable toxicological profile. The problem is that certain associations have put our products in the same basket as neonicotinoids.”

ANSES said in a statement that it had noted the ruling and would continue to examine new evidence, as requested by the government.

Environmental group Generations Futures, which took the case to court, welcomed Friday’s ruling and called for an end to all neonicotinoid products.

Pesticides have come under the spotlight in a divisive EU debate over whether to renew the licence for glyphosate, a widely used weedkiller made popular by Monsanto’s Roundup brand.

The EU’s health regulator approved sulfoxaflor in 2015.

ANSES authorized sulfoxaflor for use on straw cereals like wheat as well as fruit and vegetable crops, but prohibited it for crops that attract pollinating insects and for all crops during flowering periods, noting potential toxic effects for bees.

The court in Nice said it was unclear whether restrictions set out by ANSES on the use of sulfoxaflor would be followed.

Dow Chemical, which in September completed a merger with U.S. peer DuPont to become DowDuPont, said sulfoxaflor is used in more than 40 countries.

In Canada, sulfoxaflor is an approved active ingredient in Dow AgroSciences’ Closer and TwinGuard insecticides, and in a Syngenta seed treatment product, Rascendo.

— Gus Trompiz reports on commodities for Reuters from Paris. Includes files from AGCanada.com Network staff.

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Customers have complained of longer transit times, unreliable switching operations, inefficient car routings and poor communications with CSX customer service.

CEO Hunter Harrison, who implemented cuts when he was appointed to the job in March, defended his strategy of “precision scheduled railroading” at a hearing at the U.S. Surface Transportation Board (STB) in Washington.

The session marked the first public forum for shippers and trade groups to air grievances and give Harrison the chance to defend his strategy. The STB has been reviewing the railroad’s performance weekly and acting as intermediary between CSX and disgruntled customers.

Since he took over, Harrison closed CSX rail yards, lengthened trains, mothballed locomotives and slashed overtime pay and hundreds of jobs. He also changed the way rail cars are sorted in yards and replaced “unit” trains carrying a single commodity like coal or grain with trains carrying diverse freight.

He apologized to shippers for service disruptions, which he blamed on derailments and internal mistakes, including closing too many yards.

Speaking after Harrison, Cargill vice-president Brad Hildebrand asked the STB to publish minutes of its weekly calls with CSX management and asked CSX to return resources to its network.

“In a nutshell, (precision scheduled railroading) means having to do with less,” he told the regulators.

While some customers have noted improvements, others said CSX’s disruptions continue to create costly logistical headaches for companies from the chemical and agricultural sectors to the automotive industry and steel producers.

Their supply chains, plants and distribution channels rely on CSX’s rail network across the eastern U.S.

Harrison said his strategy was critical to his previous turnarounds of two Canadian railroads — Canadian Pacific Railway and Canadian National Railway — and said the “best is right around the corner.”

“We’ve made some mistakes. This is not a failure of precision scheduled railroading,” he said.

Harrison told the STB his turnaround plan has been implemented across CSX’s system but requires “fine-tuning.” He hinted at more possible layoffs and other yard changes.

Chemours Company asked the STB to require a “flight plan” from CSX outlining future system changes and how they will affect shippers.

In what could be a distant threat to CSX’s revenues, Chemours and trade groups renewed their calls for changes to federal regulations to allow shippers served by CSX to gain greater access to other operators.

Two trade groups asked the STB to require a service recovery plan from CSX with granular performance data and penalty-enforced deadlines.

Dow Chemical’s supply chain vice-president Greg Jozwiak urged the STB to improve rules to expedite relief during disruptions.

“The reality is the procedures take too long,” Jozwiak said. “We need a service remedy counted in days, not weeks or months.”

— Eric M. Johnson is a Reuters correspondent based in Seattle.

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Philadelphia-based FMC Corp. announced Thursday it received the final approval needed, from the Competition Commission of India, to close the deal the company reached with DuPont in late March.

FMC’s deal allows DuPont to shed several of the assets required to meet regulators’ conditions for its own merger with Dow Chemical, which closed Sept. 1.

The deal, an asset swap which will see DuPont get FMC’s health and nutrition business plus US$1.2 billion cash, is now on track to close effective Nov. 1, FMC CEO Pierre Brondeau said in a release.

For Canadian farmers, the deal will see FMC take over DuPont’s portfolio of cereal broadleaf and pre-seed burn-off herbicides in Canada.

The deal also gives FMC the PrecisionPac herbicide dispensing system; DuPont’s experimental farm at Hanley, Sask., south of Saskatoon; a packaging plant in Calgary; and a chemical manufacturing facility at Manati in Puerto Rico.

The Competition Bureau of Canada, which cleared the Dow/DuPont merger in June, noted the deal will also give FMC DuPont’s Stine facility at Newark, Delaware.

The Stine plant, the bureau said, today houses DuPont’s “primary herbicide discovery and development efforts for Canadian markets.”

FMC, which maintains a Canadian office in Saskatoon, is an “acceptable” buyer for the DuPont assets, with “the managerial, operational and financial capability to compete effectively in Canada,” the bureau said in June.

FMC’s Canadian brand portfolio includes Aim, Authority, Command 360 and Focus herbicides, Rovral, Fracture and Fullback fungicides and Pounce, Beleaf and Capture insecticides. — AGCanada.com Network

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