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Monsanto, Bayer officials defend proposed $66 billion merger

Over the mid to long-term, the combined business will be able to accelerate innovation and provide customers with enhanced solutions and an optimised product suite based on analytical agronomic insight supported by digital farming applications.

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It comes amid record harvests driving crop prices to painfully low levels for many farmers. “It has been both companies’ belief that this challenge requires a new approach that more systematically integrates expertise across Seeds, Traits and Crop Protection including Biologicals with a deep commitment to innovation and sustainable agriculture practices”, said Liam Condon, member of the Board of Management of Bayer AG and head of the Crop Science Division.

The Bayer-Monsanto merger will create a company controlling more than a quarter of the combined world market for seeds and pesticides in the fast-consolidating farm supplies industry. These benefits were described as “economic synergy” by Monsanto executive vice president Robb Fraley. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Interestingly, this comes just about a week after the German drugmaker signed an all-cash deal to acquire US seed giant Monsanto Company MON for $66 billion. Grassley urged antitrust regulators to closely watch consolidation of the agricultural biotech industry, noting that mergers between Dow Chemical and DuPont, and Syngenta AG and the China National Chemical Corp. are already under government review.

It appears that some of the opposition to the deal can be traced to a dislike of the companies involved, especially Monsanto. He said this meant merging the two companies would not reduce competition.

Democrats were less supportive.

Bayer and Monsanto executives said they won’t identify areas of business overlap before regulators in the European Union, U.S., Canada, Brazil and two dozen other countries review the acquisition for potential antitrust issues. “Size is less important than how good you can innovate”.

The merger is the third pairing of top seed and chemical companies in less than a year.

Farm groups at the hearing testified that they’re anxious about the consequences of a Bayer and Monsanto combination, as well as other agricultural biotech mergers in the works.

“These mergers will result in fewer choices for farmers, higher prices, and less innovation”, he said.

“Technology advances are going to transform our industry, so we need to invest more and take advantage of breakthroughs to make more products”, Fraley said in a telephone interview. Bayer also owns Dr. Scholl’s foot products and Coppertone sunscreen. This past May, environmentalists amassed in cities around the world once again for their annual “March Against Monsanto”, which for four years has been protesting the world’s most infamous producer of genetically modified crops.

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. Activists who oppose those so-called genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, have created a grassroots effort to vilify the company, even holding marches on city streets to protest Monsanto by name. We’ve raised our Monsanto fair value estimate to $126 per share from $120 to reflect the acceptance of Bayer’s $128 per share offer but still account for the chance that the deal fails to clear regulatory hurdles.

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The American Soybean Association responded to an announcement September 14 from Bayer and Monsanto that the two companies have signed an acquisition agreement under which Bayer will purchase Monsanto.

In the short term the German drugs and chemicals firm hopes to benefit from a marketing and sales force that can promote combinations of the two groups existing products