E I Du Pont De Nemours Co Inc

Fluor Corp. is teaming up with DuPont Co. to design and build industrial plants that will produce resins used in making plastic containers for thousands of commercial products, the companies said Thursday. The plants feature a new technology specifically developed for packaging resin, "and we fully expect it to be the process of choice for global resin production," said Robert G. Hirsh, managing director of DuPont Polyester Technologies.

DuPont kicked off an advertising campaign Wednesday designed to remind investors and employees about what the company sees as its mission: science. Replacing its "Better things for better living," which the company has used since 1935, the Delaware giant introduced "The miracles of science" with a 12-page special section in the Wall Street Journal.

In a move that could dramatically enhance the role genetics play in world food production, chemical giant DuPont Co. said Monday it would buy leading seed producer Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc. in a $7.7-billion deal. The two companies signed a definitive agreement calling for a cash-and-stock merger that would give DuPont a new wholly owned unit with $5 billion in annual sales and a global marketing force devoted to the most fundamental of all agricultural products--seeds.

Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc. and DuPont Co. said they are in talks about a combination, which could expand their alliance beyond DuPont's 20% stake in the world's largest seed corn company. Wilmington, Del.-based DuPont, the biggest U.S. chemical company, paid $1.7 billion in 1997 for its interest in Pioneer. Based on Pioneer's current share price, it could cost DuPont about $6 billion to buy the rest of the Des Moines-based company.

DuPont Co., the nation's largest chemicals company, said it plans to offer a new class of stock in 2000 to allow people to invest directly in the company's small but rapidly growing life sciences division. Life sciences represent the combination of pharmaceutical, biotechnology and agricultural businesses. Each DuPont shareholder will receive one share of the "tracking stock" for each DuPont share. Other details, which must get shareholder approval, have yet to be worked out.

DuPont Co. and NL Industries Inc. dropped plans to buy the paint pigments unit of Britain's Imperial Chemical Industries because they could not agree to antitrust conditions imposed by the Federal Trade Commission. ICI also said it will cut 1,000 jobs, about half of them in Britain, in an effort to reduce costs.

DuPont Co. will pay $2.5 million to each of Georgia's law schools to settle charges it withheld evidence in a 1993 civil case. The case involved charges that the Wilmington, Del., chemical giant withheld soil samples in a suit brought in Georgia by a group of nurseries. The $11 million, which includes $1 million to fund an annual symposium, will be used to set up professorial chairs on professional ethics.

DuPont Co., the U.S.' largest chemicals company, persuaded a federal judge to throw out antitrust suits alleging DuPont's drug unit seeks to monopolize the market for blood-thinning drugs to help heart and stroke patients. U.S. District Judge Sue Robinson dismissed three suits consolidated in federal court in Wilmington, Del.