Good afternoon everyone,
The DuPont oval will show up in one more location in northern Delaware.
The company on Tuesday announced plans to buy Rogers Corp. for $5.2 billion. The deal gives the company based near Wilmington a foothold in electronic technology for electric and hybrid vehicles.
The deal includes the Rogers plant in Bear. That plant has gone through a few ownership changes over the past decade with Arlon selling out to Handy & Harman. Handy & Harman was then acquired by Rogers. Rogers has retained the Arlon name for a line of silicone products.
During the slicing and dicing that has gone on with the merger and spin-off of DuPont and Dow, DuPont swapped businesses with Philadelphia-based FMC and ended up with a pharmaceutical coatings plant near Newark that now bears the DuPont logo.
In return, FMC wound up with part of DuPont’s profitable crop protection business, along with the Stine portion of a research center near Newark. The sale to FMC was forced by European regulators as a condition for combining DuPont and Dow agribusiness operations to form Corteva.
DuPont also gained the electronics polishing business of Dow, which has operations near Newark. Dow ended up with the business when it overpaid for Philadelphia-based Rohm & Haas. Rohm & Haas earlier acquired Rodel, a privately held company based in Newark. Founder Bill Budinger started Rodel in his Delaware garage.
The Rodel name lives on in a nonprofit that champions education reform in Delaware.
The Rogers acquisition is encouraging news since DuPont has mostly sold or spun off businesses under CEO Ed Breen.
More businesses will be unloaded as Breen works to provide a more compelling story to shareholders who have long struggled to understand the company’s focus.
Critics claim that Breen is dressing up the company for the sale of its various pieces. That was the case during his run at Tyco, a scandal-ridden conglomerate with a collection of businesses that were sold off.
DuPont is now a mid-sized company by today’s standards with sales of $20.5 billion. It ranks 144th on the Fortune 500, quite a drop from No. 9 in 1990. At that time, DuPont owned petroleum giant Conoco.
Enjoy your evening and check out the story links in today’s newsletter. – Doug Rainey, chief content officer.
