DowDuPont Further Strengthens Future Board of Directors of Corteva Agriscience™, Agriculture Division of DowDuPont
WILMINGTON, Del., March 11, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- DowDuPont (NYSE: DWDP) today announced two additional members of the future board of directors of Corteva Agriscience™, Agriculture Division of DowDuPont. They are Dr. Klaus Engel, former CEO of Evonik Industries, and Rebecca Liebert, who recently became senior vice president, automotive coatings at PPG after more than a decade in leadership roles at Honeywell International. With these additions, Corteva Agriscience has 11 members on its future Board.
Greg Page, non-executive chairman-elect of Corteva Agriscience and retired chairman and CEO of Cargill Inc., said, "Continuing to build a highly qualified board, with the right mix of diverse perspectives and experience, is a critical priority as we work with Corteva Agriscience's leadership to position it to drive sustainable growth as a global leader in agriculture. With the deep expertise in science-based innovation and effective leadership of complex global businesses that Klaus Engel and Rebecca Liebert bring, our Board is even stronger and better positioned to work with management to oversee the successful execution of Corteva Agriscience's strategy and deliver value for shareholders now and into the future."
"We're delighted Klaus Engel and Rebecca Liebert are joining the future Corteva board," said Jim Collins, Chief Executive Officer-elect of Corteva Agriscience. "Their strong backgrounds speak for themselves regarding their ability to advise management as we prepare to launch this pure-play agriculture company with its unique route to market and industry-leading new product pipeline."
DowDuPont remains on track to separate the Materials Science Division (Dow) on April 1, 2019, and the Agriculture (Corteva Agriscience) and Specialty Products (DuPont) Divisions on June 1, 2019.
In addition to Mr. Page, Dr. Engel and Ms. Liebert, Corteva Agriscience's future Board of Directors includes: Jim Collins, COO of the Agriculture Division of DowDuPont and CEO-elect of Corteva Agriscience; Edward D. Breen, CEO of DowDuPont; Lamberto Andreotti, former Chairman and CEO of Bristol-Myers Squibb; Robert A. Brown, President of Boston University; Michael O. Johanns, retired U.S. Senator and former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture; Lois D. Juliber, former Vice Chairman of Colgate-Palmolive Company; Lee M. Thomas, former Chairman and CEO of Rayonier Inc.; and Patrick J. Ward, CFO of Cummins Inc.
Biographies of New Directors
Klaus Engel, Ph.D., is the former CEO of Evonik Industries AG, a specialty chemical manufacturer, from 2009 to 2017, and previously was CEO of Degussa AG, a predecessor to Evonik, from 2006 to 2009. Prior to that, Dr. Engel was CEO of Brenntag AG/ Mülheim, a global chemical distribution company, since 2001. Earlier in his career, he held various senior positions in R&D, production, marketing and strategy planning at Chemische Werke Hüls/Marl, VEBA AG, Düsseldorf and Stinnes AG and Mülheim an der Ruhr. Dr. Engel has been a member of the supervisory board of National-Bank, Essen since 2011 and joined the advisory board of Ruhr-University, Bochum, Germany in 2018. He is honorary professor at University of Duisburg/Essen and Member of the Board of trustees of Bonner Akademie für angewandte Politik at University of Bonn.
Rebecca B. Liebert is senior vice president, automotive coatings at PPG, a publicly traded global manufacturer of paints, coatings and specialty materials. She joined PPG in 2018, following a decade at Honeywell in senior roles including most recently serving as President and CEO of Honeywell UOP, which develops technology for the petroleum refining, gas processing, petrochemical production, and major manufacturing industries. She started her career at Honeywell in the Electronic Materials business and moved to UOP in 2012. Earlier, she spent two years at Alcoa as President of Reynolds Food Packaging and started her career at Nova Chemicals.
About Corteva Agriscience™, Agriculture Division of DowDuPont
Corteva Agriscience™, Agriculture Division of DowDuPont (NYSE: DWDP), is intended to become an independent, publicly traded company when the previously announced spinoff is complete by June 2019. The division combines the strengths of DuPont Pioneer, DuPont Crop Protection and Dow AgroSciences. Corteva Agriscience provides growers around the world with the most complete portfolio in the industry — including some of the most recognized brands in agriculture: Pioneer®, Encirca®, the newly launched Brevant™ seeds, as well as award-winning Crop Protection products — while bringing new products to market through our solid pipeline of active chemistry and technologies. More information can be found at www.corteva.com.
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Cautionary Statement About Forward-Looking Statements
This communication contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. In this context, forward-looking statements often address expected future business and financial performance and financial condition, and often contain words such as "expect," "anticipate," "intend," "plan," "believe," "seek," "see," "will," "would," "target," and similar expressions and variations or negatives of these words.
DowDuPont plans to separate into three, independent, publicly traded companies-one for each of its agriculture, materials science and specialty products businesses (the "Intended Business Separations" and the transactions to accomplish the Intended Business Separations, the "separations").
In furtherance of the Intended Business Separations, DowDuPont is engaged in a series of reorganization and realignment steps to realign its businesses so that the assets and liabilities aligned with the materials science business will be held by legal entities that will ultimately be subsidiaries of Dow Holdings Inc. ("Dow") and the assets and liabilities aligned with the agriculture business will be held by legal entities that will ultimately be subsidiaries of Corteva Inc. ("Corteva"). Following this realignment, DowDuPont expects to distribute its materials science and agriculture businesses through two separate U.S. federal tax-free spin-offs in which DowDuPont stockholders, at the time of such spin-offs, will receive pro rata dividends of the shares of the capital stock of Dow and of Corteva, as applicable (the "distributions").
Forward-looking statements by their nature address matters that are, to varying degrees, uncertain, including statements about the Intended Business Separations, the separations and distributions. Forward-looking statements, including those related to the DowDuPont's ability to complete, or to make any filing or take any other action required to be taken to complete, the separations and distributions, are not guarantees of future results and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements also involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the DowDuPont's control. Some of the important factors that could cause DowDuPont's, Historical Dow's or Historical DuPont's actual results (including DowDuPont's agriculture business, materials science business or specialty products business as conducted by and through Historical Dow and Historical DuPont) to differ materially from those projected in any such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to: (i) ability and costs to achieve all the expected benefits, including anticipated cost and growth synergies, from the integration of Historical Dow and Historical DuPont and the Intended Business Separations; (either directly or as conducted through Historical Dow and Historical DuPont), (ii) the incurrence of significant costs in connection with the integration of Historical Dow and Historical DuPont and the Intended Business Separations; (iii) risks outside the control of DowDuPont, Historical Dow and Historical DuPont which could impact the decision of the DowDuPont Board of Directors to proceed with the Intended Business Separations, including, among others, global economic conditions, instability in credit markets, declining consumer and business confidence, fluctuating commodity prices and interest rates, volatile foreign currency exchange rates, tax considerations, and other challenges that could affect the global economy, specific market conditions in one or more of the industries of the businesses proposed to be separated, and changes in the regulatory or legal environment and requirement to redeem $12.7 billion of DowDuPont notes if the Intended Business Separations are abandoned or delayed beyond May 1, 2020; (iv) potential liability arising from fraudulent conveyance and similar laws in connection with the separations and distributions; (v) disruptions or business uncertainty, including from the Intended Business Separations, could adversely impact DowDuPont's business (either directly or as conducted by and through Historical Dow or Historical DuPont), or financial performance and its ability to retain and hire key personnel; (vi) uncertainty as to the long-term value of DowDuPont common stock; (vii) potential inability to access the capital markets; and (viii) risks to DowDuPont's, Historical Dow's and Historical DuPont's business, operations and results of operations from: the availability of and fluctuations in the cost of feedstocks and energy; balance of supply and demand and the impact of balance on prices; failure to develop and market new products and optimally manage product life cycles; ability, cost and impact on business operations, including the supply chain, of responding to changes in market acceptance, rules, regulations and policies and failure to respond to such changes; outcome of significant litigation, environmental matters and other commitments and contingencies; failure to appropriately manage process safety and product stewardship issues; global economic and capital market conditions, including the continued availability of capital and financing, as well as inflation, interest and currency exchange rates; changes in political conditions, including trade disputes and retaliatory actions; business or supply disruptions; security threats, such as acts of sabotage, terrorism or war, natural disasters and weather events and patterns which could result in a significant operational event for the DowDuPont, adversely impact demand or production; ability to discover, develop and protect new technologies and to protect and enforce the DowDuPont's intellectual property rights; failure to effectively manage acquisitions, divestitures, alliances, joint ventures and other portfolio changes; unpredictability and severity of catastrophic events, including, but not limited to, acts of terrorism or outbreak of war or hostilities, as well as management's response to any of the aforementioned factors. These risks are and will be more fully discussed in DowDuPont's current, quarterly and annual reports and other filings made with the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "Commission") as well as the preliminary registration statements on Form 10 of each of Dow and Corteva, in each case as may be amended from time to time in future filings with the Commission. While the list of factors presented here is considered representative, no such list should be considered to be a complete statement of all potential risks and uncertainties. Unlisted factors may present significant additional obstacles to the realization of forward-looking statements. Consequences of material differences in results as compared with those anticipated in the forward-looking statements could include, among other things, business disruption, operational problems, financial loss, legal liability to third parties and similar risks, any of which could have a material adverse effect on DowDuPont's, Historical Dow's, Historical DuPont's, Dow's or Corteva' s consolidated financial condition, results of operations, credit rating or liquidity. None of DowDuPont, Historical Dow, Historical DuPont, Dow or Corteva assumes any obligation to publicly provide revisions or updates to any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise, should circumstances change, except as otherwise required by securities and other applicable laws. A detailed discussion of some of the significant risks and uncertainties which may cause results and events to differ materially from such forward-looking statements is included in the section titled "Risk Factors" (Part I, Item 1A) of the 2018 annual reports on Form 10-K of each of DowDuPont, Historical Dow and Historical DuPont and as set forth in the preliminary registration statements on Form 10 of each of Dow and Corteva, in each case as may be amended from time to time in future filings with the Commission.
SOURCE DowDuPont
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