The merger of Dow and DuPont created a $160B market cap company. But this was just a first step. All the assets of the 2 conglomerates were immediately pooled into a sort-of vortex, out of which came three new companies: Chemicals, Advanced Materials and Agriculture. There were 3 new companies, but only 2 corporate brands—Dow and DuPont. We were charged with recommending which business should take the Dow brand, which the DuPont brand, which would have to create a new brand.
Assigning the Dow name was easy. The Chemicals company consisted almost entirely of Dow assets, given that DuPont had spun-off its Chemicals business 2 years earlier. The difficult decision was on the DuPont brand. The board had decided that it would go to the Agriculture company. However, after our brand financial analysis which showed that the DuPont brand would have a negative impact on the agriculture business, and play a far greater role in value creation for Advanced Materials, it reversed this decision. All 3 businesses were successfully IPO’d in summer 2019.