Daily newsletter · Fri 2 Oct 2026
Corteva fell 84% in a day and its shareholders finished roughly where they started
Corteva closed at US$12.57 on Thursday, down 83.81% from Wednesday's US$77.65. The American farm company had just handed its seed business to shareholders as a separate listed company called Vylor.
So where did the money go? Every Corteva shareholder on the register on 24 September received one Vylor share for each Corteva share. Vylor opened on the New York Stock Exchange at US$66 and traded between US$65 and US$75 all day.
Put one of each together and a holder ended Thursday with about what a single Corteva share was worth on Wednesday, or a little more. Corteva's market value shrank by more than US$42 billion, and most of it turned up again under Vylor's ticker.
Vylor takes the Pioneer seed brand and the genetics business. Corteva keeps crop protection, the chemicals farmers spray on their fields, and the legal history of the DuPont and Dow businesses it was split from in 2019.
That history is the fight. States led by California argue the split is a fraudulent transfer, meant to put valuable assets beyond the reach of claims over PFAS, the "forever chemicals". A federal court refused for a second time on Wednesday to block it.
the lawsuit carries on now that the split is done. A finding that the transfer was fraudulent could let claimants reach the seed business after all.
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