ChemChina said to meet with Syngenta regarding takeover talks

China National Chemical Corp’s chairman Ren Jianxin reportedly met with Syngenta AG in Europe last week as the Chinese chemical firm looks to move ahead with a takeover plan following Dow Chemical and DuPont’s agreed merger.

Bloomberg cited people familiar with the matter as saying that ChemChina is discussing a revised proposal to buy the Swiss pesticide maker, after its previous cash offer of CHF449 was deemed too low.

Sources said no deal has been reached and there is no guarantee ChemChina will make a new offer.

Even as negotiations with the Chinese company progress, Syngenta was also said to be holding informal talks about a combination with US peer Monsanto, after rebuffing the company’s $46.6bn takeover proposal.

“We see the rationale for a potential deal as the overall chemical sector still has plenty of embedded shareholder value that could be extracted,” said Atif Latif, director of trading at Guardian Stockbrokers.

“With the other major news in this space, namely DuPont/Dow Chemical, as well as ongoing talks with Monsanto we do continue to see the potential for more deal flow to be a major catalyst in this space.”

At 1238 GMT, Syngenta shares were up 1.9% to CHF372.50.