Bayer to cut 12,000 jobs after Monsanto takeover
BERLIN: German chemical and pharmaceutical giant Bayer said it would slash 12,000 jobs in a major restructuring following the mammoth takeover of Monsanto, enabling it to save 2.6 billion euros (US$3 billion) a year from 2022.
The planned job cuts will affect about one in every ten of the group’s 118,200 posts, “a significant number of them in Germany”, said the group in a statement.
Bayer swallowed Monsanto in one of Germany’s biggest ever corporate takeovers at a cost of US$63 billion in June.
But barely two months later, a court ruling in the US left Bayer with multi-million-dollar damages to pay as the judge found that its newly acquired subsidiary Monsanto should have warned a user about cancer risks from its herbicide Roundup.
Announcing details of the restructuring, Bayer said it planned to exit its animal health business, in order to concentrate resources on its core businesses of pharmaceuticals, consumer health and crop science.
It is also looking at letting go of its Coppertone sun care brand and Dr. Scholl’s foot care product line.
Following the tie-up with Monsanto, the group’s crop science division will be among the hardest hit by the job cuts, with 4,100 posts to go.
The company said it expected to complete trimming its headcount by the end of 2021.
“These changes are necessary and lay the foundation for Bayer to enhance its performance and agility.Withthesemeasures,weaim to take full advantage of the growth potential for our businesses,” said Werner Baumann, Bayer board chairman.
Investors gave a muted response to Bayer’s announcement, with shares in the group closing down 0.72 per cent to 63.77 euros against a flat DAX index.
Investors have been nervously watching the group since the cancer ruling in the US over Monsanto’s leading product Roundup, which contains glyphosate.
Chemical campaigners and politicians in the US and Europe argue that glyphosate causes cancer, although Bayer points to scientific studies finding no connection.
In October, a San Francisco judge upheld a jury verdict that found Monsanto liable for not warning a groundskeeper that its weed killer product Roundup might cause cancer, but slashed the damages award to US$78 million from the initial US$289 million.
By the end of last month, the US subsidiary was facing 9,300 cases over glyphosate.
But Baumann had stuck to its confident outlook in integrating Monsanto.
He acknowledged that more lawsuits could come, but reiterated that Bayer would “defend ourselves with all means available.” — AFP GENEVA: US trade restrictions have hit a total of US$369 billion of Chinese exports this year, much higher than the US$278 billion of goods impacted by tariffs alone, a regular monitoring report of G20 trade restrictions said.
The Global Trade Alert report, produced by Simon Evenett and Johannes Fritz at the University of St Gallen in Switzerland, said most media reports of US President Donald Trump’s trade policies focused on US$278 billion of tariff increases.
“However, this year has also seen US$47 billion of Chinese good shipments to the United States targeted by other US trade distortions. Furthermore, over US$43 billion of Chinese exports have been caught up in other US trade distortions that affect multiple countries,” the report said.
“In fact a total of US$369 billion of Chinese exports have faced new US trade distortions this year. Once the full range of US trade distortions is taken into account, a third more Chinese exports are implicated in this year’s trade war.”
At the same time, Chinese tariff retaliation affected US$87.5 billion of US goods exports this year.
Taking into account both sides, the scale of the trade war is 20 per cent larger than commonly reported, the report said.
GlobalTradeAlerthascatalogued global trade policies since 2009 to gauge trends in protectionism, following a pledge by the G20 group of countries in November 2008 not to resort to trade protectionism as a response to the financial crisis.
In 2017, 70 per cent of Chinese exports to the United States and US exports to China faced some kind of trade barrier.
Following this year’s escalation, 87 per cent of Chinese exports and 92 per cent of US exports are affected.
But still, the tension between Washington and Beijing accounted for only a small proportion of the total new trade restrictions imposed by G20 countries this year. — Reuters
These changes are necessary and lay the foundation for Bayer to enhance its performance and agility. With these measures, we aim to take full advantage of the growth potential for our businesses. Werner Baumann, Bayer board chairman