Syngenta

[amerida]

You are welcome to your view, but perhaps read this to understand what happened last week;

https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/art...dentity-crisis

This is not a game; the events of last week, and their background, will directly affect hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people in Basel and elsewhere, adversely and much more quickly than expected. The word tragedy is not an overstatement.

[severma]

I've worked at Syngenta for over 30 years, and am soon to be an ex-employee, along with over a thousand of my colleagues, as part of a restructuring which does not seem to have been reported anywhere, and which was denied by the CFO and Head of HR in front of several hundred employees just before it was executed. I have to say, hapmojong has described very clearly and objectively the trail of disastrous decisions at Syngenta in recent years, that have led to dramatic losses of market share, a rerating from blue chip to near-junk, incredibly low morale, and an exodus of talent and experience. It's rare to get this kind of candour and insight. Your comment, gaburko, is either that of a shill for Syngenta, or is naive to the point of ignorance. It is insulting to read this kind of shallow and flippant comment, when so many peoples' lives and livelihoods are being so badly affected.

I don't have much to add to hapmojong's posts above. My view is that reasonably competent middle managers were promoted to senior executive positions, and were found wanting when pressure mounted. This is especially true of of Mack and Ramsay. The upshot is that Syngenta can no longer control its own future, as all decisions and financing thereof are decided in Beijing, not Basel. The most likely next steps are the sale of a significant share of Syngenta to a private equity house, which will run Syngenta for cash and progressively strip assets, while Chemchina keeps the intellectual property and technology which was its original motivation for the acquisition. A return to a stable, independent blue chip company is the least likely outcome, regrettably. This is partly because the successors to Mack and Ramsay are even less capable; Erik the Unready has a vision of the industry which is 15 years out of date, and is being outpaced every day by the competition. The only question is whether he and others last till June, as Chemchina's patience has already worn thin.

[leophillalo]

The global market is changing. CH is an expensive place to base employees when there are many other cheaper location options. Harsh but true. The bubble has well and truly burst.

[severma]

No disagreement on that, but it is entirely separate from the events that led to the Chemchina acquisition, and what has happened subsequently.

There is a limit to information that can be given on a public forum, but your point actually serves to highlight the deeply flawed approach that Syngenta has taken to centralisation and outsourcing. In short, major transformational programmes have been put in place that have affected thousands of people, largely without investment in core technology. This presents a variety of challenges, undermines the original business cases, and creates enormous opportunities for consultants to generate fee income. It also constrains in-market innovation, which may well be one factor behind market share losses.

This is common knowledge in Syngenta, and can be traced to a small group of people who see progressive investment to maintain competitiveness as an easy short-term cost saving. This may well now prove to be their nemesis, but at a terrible price.

[marton]

Certainly one of the stranger companies to work for "at the coal face".

Some 5 or 6 years ago they outsourced a lot of their IT support to East Europe or Asia. Consequently one had the difficult situation where users who required local support at their desk had to get this over the telephone in English language where neither party was a native English speaker.

Even worse for technical users who wanted to start a new IT project and needed help to formulate their requirements in IT speak.

Also an inability to face reality, development of new chemicals often requires running pilots for 24 or 36 hours or longer. Such pilots require constant supervision but due to automated implementation of working hours controls it was rumoured chemists would sneak in at night without logging in. Clearly if there was a fire or another accident then the emergency services would not be looking for them as they were not officially there.

They also had the ageing work force problem without any formally enforced process to identify replacements and to provide their on the job training so when people retired it was not unusual for some things to just stop working or no longer be available. Trivial example, some of the Basel buildings had free bottled water but that stopped when whoever ordered it left

[severma]

Syngenta is now in the past for me – endings are always beginnings in disguise – but it was beyond extraordinary to see the Chinese envoy for Switzerland complain about their investment in Syngenta, and half-jokingly ask if Switzerland would like to have it back?

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-sw...-idUKKCN1TU0DW

A catch up in the last week with some good friends confirmed the worst – 2019 results are dreadful, with crushing losses in market share, exacerbated by the sociopathic behaviour that passes for leadership in Building 1. Apparently, Fyrwald & Patrick were asked to leave the normal monthly meeting with Chinachem when the May results were being reviewed, so mis-judged was their approach.

There may be no way back now for Syngenta – public displays of exasperation in Beijing may well be the prelude to a very large reduction in presence in Basel, followed by other moves to recoup what they can of their investment.