Ihe fight was short-lived. As soon as the arrival of two activist investors was announced in January, Bayer’s supervisory board decided to part ways with its boss. In June, Werner Baumann will hand over his seat to American Bill Anderson. With a delicate mission for this one, to restore the reputation of the greatest German pharmacist, the inventor of aspirin in 1897, who saw his image tarnished by the acquisition in 2016 of the American Monsanto, owner of the famous Roundup to glyphosate, the most famous and hated herbicide in the world, cataloged as a “probable carcinogen” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. After more than seven years of lawsuits which cost the company more than 10 billion dollars (9.3 billion euros), it is time to turn the page. Translated into shareholder language, this means raising the stock market price.
The simplest way to do this, and this is what the two activists suggest, is to cut society in two, with pharmaceuticals on the one hand and agrochemicals on the other. Clearly, unraveling the construction of Werner Baumann, who did not hesitate to spend 63 billion dollars to get his hands on the American. Moreover, the profile of the newcomer, who spent seventeen years at the Swiss Roche, one of the most renowned pharmacists in the world, leaves little doubt when the outcome of the operation.
money and virtue
The solution of refocusing is almost always the one pushed by the shareholders when the stock market flagellates. In conglomerates, the valuation of the entities separately is often greater than the value of the group as a whole. Back to the historic activity of pharmacist, which posted very good results in 2022.
But all of that is only half the story. One of the two activists at work, Jeffrey Ubben, has the double particularity, with his new fund, Inclusive Capital, of only investing in companies that have a social and environmental impact. And 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 work twice as hard in research on seeds and their treatments to feed humanity.
Moreover, when Bayer’s American competitor, Dow Chemical, decided to separate from its 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.