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    Case Study

    Feeding the dragon: Revisiting ChemChina’s acquisition of Syngenta

    By Benoit F. Leleux and Jiajin Wang
    21 pages
    December 2024
    Order this case study
    Reference: IMD-7-2577

    Basel (Switzerland), March 2024. The acquisition of Syngenta by ChemChina in 2017 was a major event for the agricultural industry and, with a price tag of $43 billion, the largest ever foreign acquisition by a Chinese firm. A number of issues were flagged by analysts as key concerns, including governance, post deal integration, culture conflicts and a lack of synergies. With hindsight, were those concerns valid or had they failed to capture the overarching rationale for the Syngenta deal? Why did the Syngenta board support the transaction when so many other western firms rejected such approaches? More remarkable even was the fact that the CEO brought in to manage the complex acquisition, Eric Fyrwald, was still in place seven years after the transaction, an inordinately long tenure for a chief executive in any setting. What were the keys to this remarkable longevity? How did Eric manage to combine these two hugely different entities into an even more formidable giant? What did it take to balance the cultural sensitivities of Swiss and Chinese shareholders and managers? Could lessons be learned for other executives put in charge of complex, multicultural, transformational acquisitions? The success rate of M&A transactions was notoriously poor: What made this such a different animal?

    Learning Objective
    • Managing post-merger integration in multi-cultural settings
    • Developing a China strategy
    • Defining proper governance in a multinational company
    Keywords
    Mergers and Acquisitions, Business Transformation, China, Corporate Transformation, Change Management, Agribusiness, Seed Cultivation, Chemicals, Governance, Multinational Corporation, Culture
    Settings
    World/global
    ChemChina, Syngenta, Food Production, Agriculture, Food Production, Agricultural Services
    2017-2024
    Type
    Field Research
    Copyright
    © 2024
    Available Languages
    English
    Related material
    Teaching note, Video
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