Bayer gets nod to buy Monsanto

BAYER has won US approval for its planned takeover of Monsanto after agreeing to sell about $US9 billion ($A12 billion) in assets, clearing a major hurdle for the $US62.5 billion deal that will create by far the largest seeds and pesticides maker.

Makan Delrahim, who heads the US Justice Department’s antitrust division, said the asset sales agreed to by Bayer were the “largest ever divestiture ever required by the US”.

A Bayer spokesman said the planned sale of businesses with 2.2 billion euros in sales to BASF already agreed to address antitrust concerns, mainly in Europe, were not materially different from the DoJ’s demands.

“Receipt of the DoJ’s approval brings us close to our goal of creating a leading company in agriculture,” Bayer chief executive Werner Baumann said.

After months of delays, the ruling brings Bayer close to creating an agricultural supplies giant with sales of about 20 billion euros.

At current foreign exchange rates, that compares with about 12.4 billion euros at DowDuPont’s Corteva Agriscience unit, 11 billion euros at ChemChina’s Syngenta and 7.9 billion at BASF, including businesses to be acquired.

Bayer’s move to combine its crop chemicals business, the world’s second-largest after Syngenta AG, with Monsanto’s industry-leading seeds business, is the latest in a series of major agrochemicals tie-ups.

US chemicals giants Dow Chemical and DuPont merged last September and China’s state-owned ChemChina bought Syngenta and two Canadian fertiliser producers merged to form a company called Nutrien.