Wednesday newspaper round-up: Dow Chemical/DuPont, Yahoo, VW, Darling, Walt Disney
Dow Chemical and DuPont are in talks over a potential $120bn merger that would bring together America’s two largest chemicals companies, and then split them up into three new businesses, according to a person familiar with the negotiations. A deal between Dow and DuPont would be close to a merger of equals: Dow has a market capitalisation of $60bn and DuPont of $59bn at their closing share prices on Tuesday. – Financial Times
Yahoo has abandoned plans to spin-off its $32bn stake in Chinese e-commerce group Alibaba under pressure from investors worried about a potentially huge tax bill and is looking at selling or spinning off its core business instead. Shares in Yahoo rose more than 2 per cent in after-hours trading in New York after people familiar with the matter said the board had walked away from the spin-off which had been announced in February and was due to take place at the end of this year. – Financial Times
Volkswagen has been suspended from the index of socially responsible investments after it was found to have cheated on emissions tests. FTSE Russell, the London Stock Exchange's index provider, has removed the German carmaker from its FTSE4Good list and barred its re-entry for at least two years. "The company is deemed to have misled government agencies and consumers over vehicle emissions through the application of software designed to circumvent test requirements," FTSE Russell said. – Telegraph
Alistair Darling, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, has been appointed to the board of US bank Morgan Stanley. Mr Darling, who served in the Labour government from 1997 to 2010 and was head of the Treasury during the financial crisis, will start his new role on January 1. – Telegraph
Nearly £7 billion was wiped from the value of Britain’s leading mining companies yesterday after traders took fright at a dividend cut by Anglo American and as new signs of a slowdown in China sent commodity prices crashing to their lowest levels for years. – The Times
Walt Disney has doubled its stake in Vice Media, the edgy, youth-focused media group, in a deal that takes its stake to 10% and values the group at $4bn (£2.6bn). According to sources familiar with the situation, Walt Disney is said to have paid $200m for its additional 5% stake. The new investment comes as Vice continues to roll out new products across the globe and is to launch a cable TV network in the US next year. – Guardian
Petrol could drop below £1 a litre, the RAC has said, predicting that the tumbling oil price will bring significant discounts on forecourts in time for Christmas. The RAC said there should be a 3p drop for petrol and 5p for diesel. This would take average prices to around 103p for petrol and 104p for diesel, but experts predicted prices would be lower at many forecourts. - Guardian