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Investors angry at the gates and thousands of lawsuits, Bayer executives struggled to keep their heads out of the water. Looks like the relief is not coming soon, at least not in the audience room.
A California jury went to Bayer, which is now selling Roundup, a glyphosate herbicide, with $ 2 billion in punitive damages Monday as part of a civil lawsuit linking the drug to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. couple. The jury also awarded the pair of plaintiffs $ 55 million in combined damages, making the grand jury verdict of $ 2.55 billion against Bayer in its history.
Bayer acquired Roundup in 2018 as part of its $ 63 billion buyout of Monsanto. The company faces some 13,400 actions in liability for this product, long accused of leading to cancer among agricultural workers.
Bayer announced its intention to appeal the verdict, saying the jury's findings were at odds with a recent opinion from the Environmental Protection Agency that glyphosate was a carcinogen. Bayer, who now has three consecutive defeats in California courts, said his legal strategy would focus on appeals and other means rather than Roundup's defense in jury trials.
While punitive damages in this case are likely to be significantly reduced, thanks to the US Supreme Court's 9: 1 compensatory indemnity rule, the verdict casts a shadow over Bayer as a cost indicator. eventualities of his Roundup trial.
On Monday, Bayer's shares went from $ 16.36 to $ 15.90, a free fall of almost 30%. On Tuesday, at press time, the company's shares had stabilized at $ 15.91 per share.
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Falling stock prices and growing litigation on the horizon could be a problem for Bayer's beleaguered leadership, which has not been popular among investors in recent months.
At the end of April, 55.5% of shareholders cast a vote of no confidence on the measures taken by management in 2018 at the company's annual general meeting in Bonn, Germany. The vote was symbolic, but it proved to be the lowest endorsement in the company's history after the war, according to the Financial Times of the time.
However, despite shareholder dissension, Bayer's supervisory board supported management in general, including managing director Werner Baumann, while acknowledging that the vote was "a clear signal" that work to strengthen investor support. Bayer is restructuring its pharmaceutical and health business with the planned sale of its animal health division and 12,000 job cuts in order to strengthen its life sciences divisions and streamline operations.
Roundup is not the only legal puzzle Bayer has identified at Monsanto. On Monday, the company hired an outside law firm to investigate allegations that Monsanto has compiled a list of 200 influential figures, including lawmakers and journalists, to influence the company's ability to influence the company. public opinion about its pesticides. After an internal review, Bayer issued a public apology and did not indicate that the list had been compiled illegally.
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In the midst of Bayer's legal troubles at Monser, the company recorded strong sales of pharmaceuticals in the first quarter, thanks to the disproportionate performance of its older drugs, including the anticoagulant agent Xarelto and the drug Eylea for the treatment of macular degeneration related to aging. In China, where Nexavar and Stivarga drugs, used against liver cancer, have skyrocketed, Bayer has achieved a pharmaceutical business turnover of 776 million euros, up 24% from the previous year. in the previous year.
Bayer hopes that these solid sales figures will help offset not only the litigation losses of the company, but also the rejection of its animal health and sun protection business. Bayer announced Tuesday that it would sell its Coppertone solar protection line in Beiersdorf for $ 550 million, as part of a restructuring to focus more on the pharmaceutical sector and reduce its costs. In all areas.
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