--FILE--Ren Jianxin, Chairman of ChemChina (China National Chemical Corporation), poses next to a model of a chemical plant at the headquarters of Che

--FILE--Ren Jianxin, Chairman of ChemChina (China National Chemical Corporation), poses next to a model of a chemical plant at the headquarters of ChemChina in Beijing, China, 18 April 2015. Once Ren Jianxin has an acquisition target in his sights, he does not let go of it easily. Months after the head of China's largest chemicals company failed in a bid for Syngenta, which valued the Swiss agribusiness at $42 billion, ChemChina is reportedly closing in on a higher offer. If the transaction is concluded, it would represent the largest overseas acquisition by a Chinese company and would give Mr Ren his second major trophy in as many years. In 2015 ChemChina, one of the country's largest state-owned enterprises with 300 billion yuan ($45.6 billion) in revenues and 140, 000 employees, paid 7.3 billion euros for Italy's Pirelli, one of the world's most famous tyre companies. That transaction was the latest example of Mr Ren's dogged approach to deal-making after an initial offer was abandoned three years earlier. Sealing the deal with Syngenta would, as was the case with ChemChina's Pirelli coup, make the Chinese group a major player in a sector where it was previously little known. Syngenta is one of the dominant names in the $100 billion-a-year agribusiness industry alongside Monsanto, Dupont's seed business and the agriculture units of BASF, Bayer and Dow Chemical.