Acquisition and Breakup
The company merged with American Home Products in 1994. At that time, the purchase price, $9.5 billion, made it the second-largest industrial acquisition in US history to that point. Various operations were sold or spun off, such as making Formica Corporation a stand-alone company. American Home Products eventually changed its name to Wyeth Corporation (one of its subsidiaries), and in 2009 Wyeth merged with Pfizer, becoming a subsidiary of the world's largest pharmaceutical company.
After the AHP acquisition, the Cyanamid conglomerate was disassembled over a period of years. The Pigments division was sold to National Lead Company. The Old Spice product line, and some others, were sold to Procter and Gamble. Formica Corp. was taken private in a management buyout, and later went through a series of ownership changes, currently being headquartered in the United Kingdom.
The $1.7 billion agricultural business was sold in 2000 to the German chemical giant BASF, raising BASF agricultural sales to $3.6 billion (1999 pro-forma), making it one of the top three agricultural companies in the world.
Most of the chemical businesses of American Cyanamid are now operated by a spun-off successor company known as Cytec.
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