Reuters — DuPont said Tuesday it expected the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s review of its proposed merger with Dow Chemical to be completed by the end of June.
The two chemical companies agreed to combine in an all-stock merger in December, valued at US$130 billion at the time, in a first step towards breaking up into three separate businesses.
“We are shooting for October-November kind of close of the transaction,” DuPont CEO Edward Breen said on a post-earnings call.
“Everything with the merger with Dow is right along the track we thought it would be… filings in jurisdictions around the world have happened on the schedule we needed,” he told Reuters.
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DuPont said last month that the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice had requested additional information and materials to assess the merger.
DuPont indicated Tuesday the second request under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvement Act was anticipated and “everything is according to the timeline”.
DuPont said it was aiming to buy back US$2 billion of shares in 2016, and would make the repurchases after shareholders vote on the deal, expected to be held after completion of the SEC review.
DuPont on Monday reported a better-than-expected first-quarter profit and raised its 2016 earnings forecast, citing a weakening of the dollar against “most currencies.”
— Reporting for Reuters by Swetha Gopinath and Amrutha Gayathri in Bangalore.
