You can’t blame the Americans at Monsanto any more. Europe’s most politically inflammatory chemical — the ubiquitous weedkiller glyphosate — is now well and truly a German problem.
Shareholders of the German chemical giant Bayer staged a full-blown revolt at a heated 13-hour meeting in Bonn on [April 26], arguing that the management failed to see the company was inheriting a raft of nightmarish litigation associated with glyphosate when it bought U.S. agrichemical giant Monsanto for $66 billion [in 2018].
The investors are furious that a blue-riband European company is now potentially exposed to billions of dollars of claims over the glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup, created by Monsanto. Two U.S. court verdicts over the past year found that the world’s most popular herbicide caused cancer, hauling shares in Bayer down about 40 percent since August. Bayer has appealed those decisions but is now facing an avalanche of some 13,400 claims.
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Bayer’s management argues that the furor is unscientific and that glyphosate poses no danger. Chief Executive Baumann sought to forestall the shareholder revolt in Bonn on [April 26] by saying: “We were convinced at the time — and we are today — that glyphosate is a safe product when used as directed….
Read full, original article: Glyphosate revolt rocks Germany Inc.
