Monsanto, Bayer officials defend proposed $66 billion merger

Bayer aims to expedite innovation at the Consumer Health business mainly by pursuing regulatory approval for over-the-counter (OTC) status for products that were previously only available with a prescription (Rx-to-OTC switches) and through the development of new digital health offerings to consumers.

It comes amid record harvests driving crop prices to painfully low levels for many farmers.

“No one this side of the dais should be surprised that they have to go through this to survive”, Tillis said.

Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, and Bayer announced a $66 billion deal last week; and Canadian fertilizer companies Potash Corp. and Agrium recently proposed their own tie-up. Other witnesses that testified at the hearing included executives from Bayer CropScience, DuPont Co., Dow Chemical AgroSciences and Monsanto Co. The combined company would command more than a quarter of the combined world market for seeds and pesticides in the fast-consolidating farm supplies industry and create a one-stop shop for seeds, crop chemicals and computer-aided services to farmers. Charles Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“This merger threatens jobs in my district and risks significant loss of competition in the seed and agricultural industry, and I believe it deserves close scrutiny by Congress and the Department of Justice”, he said.

A subsidiary of Bayer AG, chemicals giant Bayer MaterialScience is now operating under the new name Covestro as a mark of its new direction as an innovation-driven polymers company.

Following the move, Essel Deutschland Germany (EDG) has become a cent percent subsidiary of Essel Propack, the company said in a statement.

Democrats were less supportive.

Two weeks before the $88 billion buyout deal was confirmed last Wednesday night Bayer quietly pulled the pin on its genetically modified (GM) cotton seed development work, raising questions about the deal’s impact on commercial research and development. “You have to look at it from the consumer’s point of view, and whether that is good policy”, said Illinois Sen. Bayer and Monsanto announced they had signed a definitive merger agreement.

Monsanto’s merger with Bayer, the global chemical and pharmaceutical company most famous for producing Aspirin, is the largest-ever foreign takeover bid from a German company. Also present were farmer groups including the National Farmers Union, which testified that US growers will face fewer choices, higher prices and less innovation if the deals go ahead.

But Bayer has said the main reason for buying the world’s biggest seeds company is to develop entirely new product combinations, such as weed killers and crops that resist them.

Novak said the ChemChina purchase of Syngenta raises issues of China giving preference to Syngenta seed genetics regarding importation of grain, and to retard the approval of genetic traits from other companies, which would create an global trade issue.

The deal between Bayer and Monsanto is the largest involving a German buyer, which is even larger than the merger between Daimler and Chrysler in 1998, which was worth more than $40 billion. Fraley reminded the senator that if the merger is given final federal approval, the newly minted Monsanto-Bayer corporation would stay in Monsanto’s current home base of St. Louis, Missouri, propping up the local economy and keeping jobs on USA soil.