This area near the thumb of Michigan is a place of small towns, farmhouses, and one giant corporate citizen in great distress.
Dow Chemical Co., the region's biggest employer and civic booster, faces narrowing options in its disastrously timed decision to buy Philadelphia's Rohm & Haas Co. for $15.3 billion in cash.
Dow has all but said that the deal would ruin the nation's largest chemical company.
Dow slashed its dividend last month, something it didn't do in the Great Depression, and local reSidents fear the company could be sold off limb by limb.
Indeed, the Dow executives have said they're considering 12 asset-sale scenarios to raise cash for the stalled merger. "Everything's on the table," said one Dow official.
Why would they need cash?
The staggering $15.3 billion price for Rohm & Haas, agreed upon last July, is going up $3 million a day because of penalties. Dow is fighting a desperate legal battle in Delaware's Court of Chancery to stave off a final closing of the merger.
New York hedge fund operators, and many legal experts, say they believe Dow will lose in court. A trial is scheduled for March 9 before Judge William Chandler 3d. Chandler is expected to balance the binding contract with Dow's doomsday scenario if the merger happens.
Dow is accelerating a program to close about 20 plants globally and streamline its operations with fewer employees, company officials say.
Investment bankers are shopping some of Dow's prized assets, such as its 50 percent stake in Dow Corning Corp., a major local employer, and a highly profitable agricultural division with operations in Midland.
And what led to this?
Dow and the Kuwait government planned a joint venture with Dow's commodity chemical and plastics businesses, naming it K-Dow.
The venture would have brought Dow $7 billion to $9 billion in cash for the Rohm & Haas acquisition. Kuwait canceled the joint venture in late December.
Without the Kuwait cash, Dow has to rely mostly on a one-year bank loan for funds to close on Rohm & Haas.
The home of the Looooons? Dow Diamond.
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