Bayer Baumann CEO has resigned. Requested the dissolution of the group. In 2018, it bought Monsanto. Bayer shares have been declining since 2015. The case
A pharmaceutical giant that acquires an agricultural biotech giant. It was described in a colorless way the most impressive operation in recent years which in 2018 led the German Bayer to buy Monsantoa leading American company of seeds and pesticides, with an outlay, in the payment of the shares, of approximately 66 billion dollars.
Bayer’s CEO, Werner Baumann, long criticized by both shareholders and consumers for the 2018 operation, has resigned in these hours. Billions in legal costs have been weighing on the group’s figures for years for proceedings and settlement payments owed to Monsanto.
When it comes to Monsanto immediately brings to mind glyphosate, one of the most important pesticides in the world and certainly the most used in Italy.
In the laboratory, glyphosate causes genetic damage and oxidative stress, but carcinogenicity has not yet been proven with absolute certainty in human studies. The IARC, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, has included it in the category of “probable carcinogens” and not in that of “certain carcinogens”.
Pesticide exposure resulted anyway a factor in the increase in cases of childhood leukemia, neurodegenerative diseases and among these Parkinson’s. An important epidemiological correlation would also emerge between the use of glyphosate (also found in the blood and urine of farmers) and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Here too the studies need to be deepened, as there is a lack of certainties on quantities, patterns of exposures and effects over the short, medium and long term.
New studies are needed to understand its scope and understand the effect of diffusion on the territories but certainly the overlap between agri-food and pharmaceuticals does not bode in favor of simplifying traceability for consumers. The risk is an interweaving of previously unconnected industrial branches that can be reinforced by new technologies, from genetic engineering to artificial intelligence. But glyphosate seems to have weighed heavily in the criticisms of the acquisition of Bayer and Baumann.
Bayer has an important presence in Italy: a historic headquarters in Milan. For the Crop area, it has research and development centers throughout the country, a sales office in Parma and a production center in the province of Ancona. Monsanto, on the other hand, has three offices: Milan, Parma and in the province of Florence.
The sovereign wealth fund of Singapore, Temasek, one of the largest shareholders with over 3%, and several Anglo-Saxon investor activists have long been calling for a change in the group’s policies. The fundamental problem is that Bayer’s shares have been, albeit on and off, down for years.
Activist investors are even calling for the group to be dissolved. Since the middle of last year it has been clear that Baumann had no intention of extending his contract, which actually ran until 2024. If Bayer, with its over-the-counter drugs such as aspirin, was separated from food products, he would see his own actions valued more and better. This would reduce the legal and reputational risks and allow agrochemical products to be separated from the parent company.
Former head of longtime Swiss pharmaceutical rival Roche, Bill Anderson, a proven pharmaceutical expert, is expected to take the lead at the German giant. Everything seems to be heading towards diversification even if in the past the group’s management had repeatedly rejected such plans and also referred to overlaps between pharmaceutical and agricultural research, with a use of genetic engineering.
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