For the first time in 84 years, the DuPont name will not be included in the iconic Dow Jones Industrial Average, as the legendary local corporate titan splits into three new independent companies.
The DuPont Company technically was replaced on the blue-chip 30-stock index in 2017, when the two chemical giants merged to create DowDupont. Now, as the combined company proceeds with its split into three new firms – Dow, DuPont and Corteva Agriscience – Dow will be taking the place of DowDuPont on the index. The change will go into effect before the US stock market opens on April 2.
Parts of the old ‘Uncle Dupey’ material sciences business included in the new Dow Inc. will still be represented on the index, but the prestige of being listed in the market basket of top public companies will go to Dow’s Midland, Michigan headquarters.
The Dow has undergone significant changes since November 1935, when E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company first joined its ranks. In those days, it was indeed an “industrial”-heavy grouping of companies, including the likes of US Steel, Union Carbide, International Nickel Company, Bethlehem Steel and American Can Company. Those companies are gone from the list (if not existence), including the bluest of blue chips, General Electric. GE was dumped from the Dow Jones in 2018, the last of the original 30 from the index founding in 1896.
Today the list includes financial, tech and retail giants like Apple, Cisco Systems, Goldman Sachs and Walmart.
The constituent makeup of the Dow Jones isn’t the only thing that’s changed over the years (that’s happened 54 times); the index itself, founded by publisher Charles Henry Dow, is now known as S&P Dow Jones Indices, which came to be owned by Rupert Murdoch when his News Corporation bought the parent company of the Wall Street Journal in 2007.
That stock exchange Dow shouldn’t be confused with our chemical Dow … that company (which recently rolled out, then apparently and smartly repealed the unfortunate tagline “solutionism”) was founded by Canadian-born Herbert Henry Dow in 1897.
