Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowIndianapolis-based Corteva Agriscience’s announcement on Wednesday that it would split into two public companies—one focused on its seed business and one on its crop protection business—left as many questions as it provided answers.
Most notably for those of us in Indiana: Where will the new companies be headquartered?
Observers said the crop protection business—which develops and manufactures fungicides, herbicides and pesticides—is likely to remain in Indianapolis, although the company wouldn’t answer IBJ’s questions about that on Wednesday.
Corteva employs about 2,000 people here now, although it’s not clear how many of them work specifically on the crop protection side of the business and how many are in administrative functions that serve both.
Some observers said the seed business, which Corteva labeled SpinCo, could be based in Johnston, Iowa, where the company has some 3,000 employees and much of its seed research and development is based. Michael Langemeier, professor of agriculture economics at Purdue University, told IBJ “there is certainly a chance” the new seed company could end up headquartered in Iowa.
Corteva CEO Chuck Magro—who will be CEO of SpinCo, the name for the crop protection spinoff—is based in Indianapolis. Corteva Chair Greg Page, who lives in the Minneapolis area, will become chair of New Corteva.
(Observers expect the names of the new companies to change, but Corteva officials did not indicate whether the names are placeholders.)
It’s only been about three years since Corteva announced that Indianapolis would be its global headquarters. The company had been based in Wilmington, Delaware, since its spinoff from parent DowDuPont in 2019 and had labeled both Indianapolis and Johnston, Iowa, as “global business centers.”
In 2022, Corteva said it would move its CEO and other key people to Indianapolis as part of its HQ designation. “The company evaluated this decision based on a number of factors, and based on this analysis, Indianapolis was the ideal choice,” a spokeswoman told IBJ then. “Indianapolis is a world class city with outstanding attributes.”
But Seth Goldstein, a Morningstar Research Services analyst, told the Des Moines Register that he expects Iowa would “be a strong candidate to be the corporate headquarters for the seed business.”
Des Moines had been the home of Pioneer, a hybrid seed company founded more than a century ago that is the heritage of Corteva’s seed business. That’s why so much of the company’s seed-related research and development is still there.
But while those jobs are already in Iowa, many of the business functions that support the seed business could be in Indianapolis—it’s hard to tell without more information. Goldstein told the Des Moines Register that “a lot of corporate jobs” could be part of a transition to Iowa.
“A lot of back-office functions that probably reside in Indianapolis today under Corteva could come to Des Moines—things like finance, accounting, IT that you need to set up a second public company,” he said.
We don’t want to lose any jobs in Indiana—and we’re talking about high-paying jobs that would be particularly painful to see leave. The HQ decision has likely been made, but we hope to learn that the city of Indianapolis and state of Indiana did as much as they could to keep those jobs local.•
__________
To comment, write to [email protected].
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.
