The fight was short -lived. As soon as announced the arrival, in January, of two activist investors, the Bayer supervisory board decided to separate from its boss. In June, Werner Baumann will give up his chair in the American Bill Anderson. With a delicate mission for this one, restoring the reputation of the greatest German pharmacist, the inventor of the aspirin in 1897, who saw his image tarnished by the acquisition in 2016 of the American Monsanto, owner of the famous Roundup In glyphosate, the most famous and hated herbicide in the world, cataloged as “probable carcinogen” by the International Center for Research on Cancer. After more than seven years of trial which cost more than $ 10 billion (9.3 billion euros) to the company, it is a question of turning the page. Translated into shareholding language, this means going up the stock market course.
For this, the simplest, and this is what the two activists suggest, consists in cutting society in two, on the one hand the pharmacy and on the other agrochemistry. Clearly, unravel the construction of Werner Baumann, who did not hesitate to spend $ 63 billion to get hold of the American. Moreover, the profile of the newcomer, which spent seventeen years with Swiss Roche, one of the most famous pharmacists in the world, leaves little doubt when at the end of the operation.
money and virtue
The refocusing solution is practically always that pushed by shareholders when the Flageole stock market course. In conglomerates, the valuation of entities separately is often greater than the value of the group as a whole. Back to the historical activity of pharmacist, which displayed very good results in 2022.
But all of this is only half of the story. One of the two maneuvering activists, Jeffrey Ubben, has the double particularity, with his new fund, inclusive capital, to invest only in companies that have a social and environmental impact. And he, what interests him is not the miracle drug against heart disease, but Monsanto! He believes that with climate change, food stress will be such that it will be necessary to put double bites in research on seeds and their treatments to feed humanity.
Besides when the American competitor of Bayer, Dow Chemical, decided to separate from his agrochemical branch in 2019, by merging it with that of Dupont, it exploded on the stock market. A martingale for the daring who will always dream of reconciling money and virtue.