Bayer AG suffered its biggest drop ever, losing about €7.6 billion ($8.3 billion) in market value, after major legal and drug-development setbacks that raise pressure on its new leader to outline a turnaround plan.
The German pharma and agriculture company stopped the main study of its top experimental medicine due to a lack of efficacy and lost a key US trial against its weed killer Roundup.
The announcement came two days after Bayer’s Monsanto unit was ordered by a Missouri jury to pay more than $1.5 billion to three former Roundup users who blamed their cancers on the controversial product in one of its largest trial losses over the herbicide.
Monsanto has been hit with a recent spate of jury verdicts finding Roundup contains carcinogens. The more than $1.5 billion verdict is one of the largest damage awards handed down against a US corporate defendant this year.
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Bayer said it will appeal the verdicts and insists the product is safe. Two years ago, the company set aside as much as $16 billion to resolve more than 100,000 cases over Roundup’s health impact.
