Once again, discussions are on-going about a possible acquisition of Syngenta, now by ChemChina or whoever else, or a merger with nobody knows who.

When this company was created as a merged spin-off of the agricultural businesses from AstraZeneca and Novartis, a joke circulated about its name, telling that it was made “sin gente”, without people. In fact, this marriage had been a forced one, the pharmaceutical mothers were no more willing to be exposed to the troubles of pesticides or of gene manipulated organisms. Fifteen years later the same sad joke can be made.

A courageous strategy was defined three years ago to address the needs of the farmer with a unified organization geared toward optimizing crop management as a whole rather than the classical driving of revenues through the performances of a range of products with various functionalities. Many critical questions can be raised about this strategy, but it has the merits of originality and of being implemented.

After having been distracted by repeated attempts of Monsanto to acquire the company, after the resignation of its CEO, and in the midst of a new upheaval of the agrochemical industry (i.e. Dow-Dupont merger, see my recent post on the Ag Industry), a disoriented board and an ad interim CEO-CFO, Syngenta’s Chairman is now communicating that the company is open to any proposal. To which purpose is not said, they just announce that they will give it up to the best offer.

At this stage I have a thought for the thousands of employees who are asked to play either an offensive role (R&D, crop management approach) or a defensive one (productivity gains), and who now know for sure that the survival (anyway shy of any triumph) of the company for which they work is no more an objective.

In French, the management of a company is called “Direction”, that is what has been dearly lacking in a company created without strategic intent, and that is now put on the market as a bunch of anonymous assets.