In February 2016, ChemChina, a Beijing-based chemicals firm, bought Switzerland’s Syngenta for just under $45 billion.
In the view of the acquirer, of regulators on three continents, and of M&A bankers involved at the time, it was an epochal deal. It was not just its size, or the fact that it managed to get over the line at all amid heightened regulatory scrutiny: it took nearly 18 months for the US Federal Trade Commission to give it the green light.
More than that, it seemed like the start of an era.
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