陶氏杜邦合并不值得贊賞！

除非是投行人士，否則就很難對陶氏化學和杜邦公司的合并產生好感。

這兩家久負盛名的科學型企業加起來有330年的歷史，市值都達到了600億美元。雙方打算先合并再拆分，進而形成三家更“專注”的公司，分屬農業產品、材料科學和特種產品領域。

我的同事史蒂芬·甘德爾認為，本次合并“和經濟增長緩慢以及投資者步調迅速有關”。激進投資者納爾遜·佩爾茨一直纏著杜邦不放。雖然杜邦前首席執行官柯愛倫曾成功阻止佩爾茨擴大自己的影響力，但佩爾茨仍是杜邦的股東，柯愛倫則丟了工作。陶氏CEO利偉誠的日子好過一些，但維權投資者丹尼爾·羅伯也一直緊咬著他不放。

本次大規模合并也許能讓股東獲利。宣布此項計劃后，兩家公司的股價均溫和上漲，但最終的結果必然是裁員和削減研發預算。這聽起來很像唐納德·特朗普說的話，敬請大家原諒。然而，很難相信中化集團的伙計們不會因此而歡欣鼓舞。

我在《華爾街日報》的朋友丹尼斯·伯曼把這樣的合并—拆分計劃稱為“美國抱負的倒退”。凱文·阿利森在金融評論網站BreakingViews上指出，此事將成為這一代人演繹的“門口的野蠻人”。（布賴恩·伯勒1991年出版的商業書籍，“門口的野蠻人”后被用來形容不懷好意的收購者——編者注）

如今，美國反壟斷部門正蠢蠢欲動，而且可能會設法阻止這次合并。但這并不能解決根本問題，那就是面對渴望收益的投資者，老牌美國企業無法通過內生性增長來滿足他們的要求。

但在深陷于美國衰落論之前，想想硅谷，可能會讓人覺得好一些。我最近見到了Pure Storage首席執行官斯科特·迪茨恩。該公司的閃存產品正在推動企業數據革命，而且最近公布的銷售額同比增長了167%以上。

2014年，迪茨恩成功推動Pure Storage上市，而且對此很滿意。他說：“我們相信上市公司的模式。我們的客戶大多都是上市公司。”迪茨恩還相信，自己的公司在企業科技轉型方面有著巨大的機會，而企業的科技轉型才剛剛開始。

迪茨恩告訴我：“我們剛開始借鑒谷歌、Facebook和蘋果時代的消費市場經驗，并把這些經驗用于企業科技。”

也就是說，這場革命仍在跌跌撞撞地向前邁進。（財富中文網）

譯者：Charlie

校對：詹妮

Unless you are an investment banker, it’s hard to feel good about the deal to merge Dow and DuPont, two storied American science companies with 330 years of history between them. The plan is to combine the two $60 billion companies and then break them apart again, creating three more “focused” companies in agriculture, materials science and specialty products.

My Fortune colleague Stephen Gandel says the deal “is about a slow-paced economy and fast-paced investors.” DuPontwas hounded by activist Nelson Peltz, whose bid for influence was defeated by CEO Ellen Kullman. But he held his shares and she lost her job. Dow’sAndrew Liveris has fared better, but he has activist Daniel Loeb nipping at his heels.

Perhaps shareholders will make money from this massive act of corporate engineering – both stocks rose modestly after the announcement – but the end result is sure to be fewer employees and shrinking research budgets. Pardon me for sounding Trumpian, but it’s hard to believe the folks at Sinochem aren’t cheering.

My friend Dennis Berman at The Wall Street Journal calls the merger/breakup “The Shrinking of American Ambition.” (subscription required.) At BreakingViews, Kevin Allison says it will be this generation’s “Barbarians at the Gates.”

As mentioned yesterday, U.S. antitrust cops are feeling their oats these days, and may try to axe this deal. But that won’t solve the basic problem: old-line American companies are facing demands from yield-starved investors which they can’t satisfy with organic growth.

Before descending too deep into declinism, however, it’s good to remember there’s always Silicon Valley. I met yesterday with Scott Dietzen of Pure Storage, whose company makes the flash storage that is helping to power the corporate data revolution and recently reported sales growth of over 167% a year.

Dietzen took Pure Storage public last year, and is happy about it. “We believe in the public company model,” he says. “Most of our customers are public companies.” And he believes his company has a huge (oops, hearing Trump again) opportunity in the tech transformation of business, which he believes is just beginning.

“We are in the first inning of taking the learnings from the Google, Facebook and Apple era in the consumer market and applying those learnings to enterprise tech,” Dietzen told me.

So the revolution stumbles on.