DuPont Critics Warn Ahead of Merger Meeting

Keep Your Promises DuPont, a pressure group that bills itself as a “community-based organization seeking to hold DuPont accountable to the people of the Greater Mid-Ohio Valley area” has written to the boards of directors of DuPont and Dow Chemical demanding that the companies remedy what it sees as “a number of inadequate or misleading disclosures in the companies’ joint merger proxy and “ensure that their shareholders are provided the requisite disclosures so as to allow them to vote their shares at the special meetings scheduled for Jul. 20, 2016.

At the separate meetings, shareholders of the two parties to the potential merger are due to vote on how to proceed. The disclosures referred to concern “the mounting liabilities” connected to PFOA (C8) and other contaminated sites, and “we do not think that shareholders should be left in the dark," said Jeffrey Dugas, campaign manager for Keep Your Promises DuPont, adding: "If DuPont and Dow have nothing to hide, they should come clean before shareholders vote on the merger next week."

DuPont is facing around 3,500 lawsuits from people who claim they or their family members suffered health problems from drinking water contaminated with C8 produced in the company’s Washington Works in West Virginia.