FRANKFURT, Germany (Reuters) — Bayer, which will need regulatory approval for its US $66 billion deal to buy American seed giant Monsanto, said the company’s chief executive officers had a productive meeting with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump talked to Bayer CEO Werner Baumann, Monsanto head Hugh Grant and some of their advisers in New York, his transition team said Jan. 12, eight days before Trump’s inauguration.
“It was a productive meeting about the future of agriculture and the need for innovation,” a Bayer spokesperson said.
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The fate of major proposed mergers, not just Bayer-Monsanto but also Dow Chemical and DuPont, which plan to spin off their combined agriculture businesses, will be decided by Trump’s nominees to lead antitrust enforcement at the justice department and the Federal Trade Commission.
Antitrust and industry experts see the regulatory hurdles to a deal as manageable because Bayer’s main business in agriculture is pesticides while Monsanto’s focus is on genetically modified seeds.
Under such a scenario, Bayer could at worst be asked to divest soybean, cotton and canola seed assets as well as LibertyLink-branded crops that are resistant to its glufosinate herbicide, an important alternative to Monsanto’s Roundup Ready seeds.
However, uncertainty remains over what regulators will make of the merged group’s grip of the overall agriculture market with a combined market share in seeds and pesticides of 28 percent.
Critics argue this dominant market position will allow it to crimp research and development efforts, but Bayer has said much needed innovation will come from combined seed-chemical offerings. It also says that it needs to merge to compete against other integrated suppliers such as the future Dow-DuPont.
The meeting took place on the day of Trump’s first news conference as president-elect, which also saw him slam drug companies as “getting away with murder” in what they charge the government for medicines.
Bayer, the inventor of aspirin, is among the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical groups.
