MARKETING NEWS.

Novartis sells its Flint fungicide business to Bayer Crop Protection for $746.3 million. The sale was ordered by regulators for the approval of the Syngenta merger ... AstraZeneca sells its acetochlor corn herbicide business to Dow Chemical Co. The European Union required the sale as part of its antitrust review for creating Syngenta.

FMC Corp. has announced a strategic restructuring that ultimately will split the corporation into two independent publicly traded companies -- a machinery business and a chemicals business. Robert Burt will continue as FMC chairman and CEO and will oversee the restructuring. FMC president Joe Netherland will run the machinery business, headquartered in Chicago. The chemicals business ultimately will be headquartered in Philadelphia, with a management team to be announced.

The supervisory board of Aventis, Strasbourg, France, has decided to divest Aventis CropScience. Aventis will evaluate all value-enhancing options, including a potential initial public offering of Aventis CropScience under the name "Agreva." The divestment process should be completed by the end of 2001. Aventis will initiate discussions with Schering AG, the minority shareholder (24 percent) of Aventis CropScience, and expects to reach an agreement within a short period of time.

Shareholders in Novartis and AstraZeneca approve the spinoff and merger of their companies' agricultural chemical units to create the world's largest crop protection group, Syngenta. Syngenta is the biggest provider of crop protection products and No. 3 in commercial seeds. Syngenta American Depository Shares are now trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "SYT." Syngenta Ordinary Shares trade on the Swiss, Stockholm and London Stock Exchanges.

Mycogen Seeds has completed its acquisition of Cargill Hybrid Seeds from Cargill Inc. The newly acquired assets will be integrated into the Mycogen organization, which is affiliated with Dow AgroSciences LLC, providing a larger and more efficient platform for the delivery of seeds and biotechnology products to market. The acquisition will not affect the sales, service or distribution of seed products from Cargill and Mycogen during the 2000-01 sales season.

Bayer AG has stated that it will drop about two-thirds of its 60 agricultural chemicals on the European market to comply with an EU safety regulation. European regulators are reassessing all agricultural chemicals sold in Europe. Bayer has decided to drop what it considers to be its less-important products as they come up for re-registration rather than invest in the research necessary for approvals. Bayer's Flint line and other major products should not be affected because they were registered recently.