Reprising an introduction from 2021's "Pension Funds Allowed to Sue Bayer Over Due Diligence in Monsanto Acquisition":
There have been some bad mergers and/or acquisitions over the years, AOL - Time Warner comes to mind both for its top-tick timing and the $54 billion write-down of some of the intangibles in the deal two years after consummation, but Bayer's purchase of Monsanto may be the worst in history.
From AgFunderNews, August 7:
The crop science giant says it has settled 17,000 cases so far and hopes for a supreme court ruling next year.
Bayer will “significantly contain” glyphosate litigation by the end of 2026, CEO Bill Anderson said this week during the company’s second-quarter 2025 earnings call.
“Every decision we make has the goal of positioning the company to move past our litigation woes.”
The company has repeatedly said this litigation—which has been ongoing since Bayer acquired Monsanto in 2018—is “a huge burden” on company financials thanks to payouts to plaintiffs alleging that the weed killer caused them to develop cancer.
Thus far, Bayer has settled 17,000 cases “at a low cost per case,” Anderson said on the call, adding that “just recently, we’ve taken thousands of cases off the table through confidential settlements on a low cost per case average in the glyphosate litigation.”
“I don’t want to get into whether this is a turning point,” he said of the settled cases. “I would simply say that we are turning over every stone to make sure that we’re executing on all of the various approaches that that we’ve called out in the past, and we remain committed to substantially containing this litigation threat to the company by the end of next year.”
Bayer has another 61,000 cases to go on glyphosate litigation, for which it just allocated an additional $1.37 billion on top of the more than $10 billion it has already spent.
It also faces significant litigation around polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chemical compounds that Monsanto stopped producing in 1977 and which the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned in 1979.
SCOTUS ruling expected ‘by summer of next year’
Bayer has repeatedly said it stands behind “the safety and non-carcinogenicity” of glyphosate.
The company is currently awaiting word from the Solicitor General as to whether the supreme court will take up the case—in which the plaintiff sued after attributing his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma to Roundup exposure—around an appeal of a lower court’s $1.25 million verdict in a Missouri state court....
....MUCH MORE
It's not as though the potential liability just crept up on the chemical behemoth. Here's a January 2019 post:
Safe Or Not, Monsanto's Roundup Is Toxic for Bayer—SpiegelAnd many more over the years:
"Can Bayer recover from its chronic pain?"
"Bayer ordered to pay $2.25 billion after jury links herbicide Roundup to cancer"
As if Germany wasn't deindustrializing fast enough, the American judiciary is there with a little nudge off the ledge.
Even before the acquisition Bayer had to know Monsanto's reputation.
March 2014 - "Why Does Everyone Hate Monsanto?" (MON)
Here's the monthly chart from TradingView:
That March 1, 2015 monthly top-tick print is at 137 euros, €27.045 last. In the trade this is politely referred to as value destruction. For what it's worth the uptick at the end of the chart is from December 1, 2024's €19.314 to that €27.045 so maybe the market thinks Mr. Anderson will get the job done.