陶氏杜邦合并不值得赞赏！

除非是投行人士，否则就很难对陶氏化学和杜邦公司的合并产生好感。

这两家久负盛名的科学型企业加起来有330年的历史，市值都达到了600亿美元。双方打算先合并再拆分，进而形成三家更“专注”的公司，分属农业产品、材料科学和特种产品领域。

我的同事史蒂芬·甘德尔认为，本次合并“和经济增长缓慢以及投资者步调迅速有关”。激进投资者纳尔逊·佩尔茨一直缠着杜邦不放。虽然杜邦前首席执行官柯爱伦曾成功阻止佩尔茨扩大自己的影响力，但佩尔茨仍是杜邦的股东，柯爱伦则丢了工作。陶氏CEO利伟诚的日子好过一些，但维权投资者丹尼尔·罗伯也一直紧咬着他不放。

本次大规模合并也许能让股东获利。宣布此项计划后，两家公司的股价均温和上涨，但最终的结果必然是裁员和削减研发预算。这听起来很像唐纳德·特朗普说的话，敬请大家原谅。然而，很难相信中化集团的伙计们不会因此而欢欣鼓舞。

我在《华尔街日报》的朋友丹尼斯·伯曼把这样的合并—拆分计划称为“美国抱负的倒退”。凯文·阿利森在金融评论网站BreakingViews上指出，此事将成为这一代人演绎的“门口的野蛮人”。（布赖恩·伯勒1991年出版的商业书籍，“门口的野蛮人”后被用来形容不怀好意的收购者——编者注）

如今，美国反垄断部门正蠢蠢欲动，而且可能会设法阻止这次合并。但这并不能解决根本问题，那就是面对渴望收益的投资者，老牌美国企业无法通过内生性增长来满足他们的要求。

但在深陷于美国衰落论之前，想想硅谷，可能会让人觉得好一些。我最近见到了Pure Storage首席执行官斯科特·迪茨恩。该公司的闪存产品正在推动企业数据革命，而且最近公布的销售额同比增长了167%以上。

2014年，迪茨恩成功推动Pure Storage上市，而且对此很满意。他说：“我们相信上市公司的模式。我们的客户大多都是上市公司。”迪茨恩还相信，自己的公司在企业科技转型方面有着巨大的机会，而企业的科技转型才刚刚开始。

迪茨恩告诉我：“我们刚开始借鉴谷歌、Facebook和苹果时代的消费市场经验，并把这些经验用于企业科技。”

也就是说，这场革命仍在跌跌撞撞地向前迈进。（财富中文网）

译者：Charlie

校对：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.