Worst ever Big Pharma acquisition? | DW News
you can turn around the company you can solve your litigation problem you can do that or you can break up but don’t think you’re going to do that all at once it’s been described as one of the worst corporate Acquisitions in history when German company Bayer bought us seed maker Monsanto for $63 billion in 2018 it inherited billions of dollars worth of lawsuits from farmers who claimed its weed killer Roundup had caused their cancer today Bayer’s entire market value is less than half of what it’s spent to buy Monsanto I spoke with Bayer CEO Bill Anderson about his plans to turn his company’s fortunes around and how it felt to face shareholders for the first time you always have to separate uh sort of there’s where you were there’s where you are and there’s where you’re going and uh I feel and I and I see this with our major shareholders and I and I’m talking with them on a very regular basis they they own our stock not because of where we were and not because of where we are but because of where they can see we’re going you know we we have these three amazing businesses each of them is is playing a vital role in the world for people for patients for Farmers for eaters that’s all of us and we have some challenges right we have a high level of debt we have the bureaucracy our Pharma pipeline is is sort of skewed toward the early stage where as we’d like it to be later right and um uh and and we have this litigation situation in the US and so we we have to basically navigate driving the businesses forward achieving this mission that we have but at the same time we’ve got to tackle those four challenges and and that’s basically our our major shareholders are all on board with this we communicated this to the capital markets already about 6 weeks ago and um they’re basically saying yeah let’s do this a lot of people were expecting you to break up the company though to maybe sell the consumer health division you know you’ve got crop science consumer health and Pharma you haven’t ruled out doing that in the future but why did you decide not to do it now yeah yeah because of the situation I mentioned with these four big challenges it’s really clear we need to put 100% of our energy into as I said driving the three businesses and solving the four challenges that’s a lot okay you know most people try to keep it to like three things we got seven now if you if you decide you’re going to break up that actually becomes all-encompassing all absorbing I’ve spoken to the leaders of most of the major companies who’ve done these breakups in the last few years and that’s basically they told me they said hey you can turn around the company you can solve your litigation problem you can do that or you can break up but don’t think you’re going to do that all at once because that’s a that’s basically a full Full Employment Act for everybody when you decide to do a breakup let’s talk about glyphosate then that’s the active ingredient in the weat killer Roundup which you acquired from Monsanto there are obviously diverging opinions even within the medical community but broadly speaking Regulators are on your side in the conviction that round up when used correctly does not cause cancer I am wondering then if you have the science on your side with this how is it that you’re spending tens of billions of dollars settling these cases yeah it it’s a very complex uh situation because we’re we’re dealing with the the the Tor the product liability courts in America and you know it how do I say it’s as if the question about the safety of glyphosate is getting re-examined in you know a 100 different courts but not by scientific experts and not by um you know medical experts and and so it it just leads to very strange outcomes you know so so if you look at any any assemblage of the facts whether you look at animal studies of glyphosate whether you look at these populationbased studies it’s it’s clear this this is not um yeah this is not a product that’s causing cancer there are studies though that show that farmers in general are more risk of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma if it’s not weed killer what what else could it be I mean you’re you’re Scientist by background what what are the other factors again in in um looking at questions of causality in medicine you need to look at the largest and and most unbiased trials and so you know at some point we have to ask do facts matter and if they do we have to act on that talking about acting on it you want to put an end to the system in the United States that allows these cases to be brought forward in the first place because there is inconsistency between the federal and the state level in terms of Regulation you’ve been lobbying members of Congress to that end what reaction have you got from them well we we have conversations with people with Farmers with policy makers with the general public um and and we’re sort of saying hey we have a system in the US regarding pesticides that that’s really broken you know for example we we make medicines when we study a medicine we we have clinical trials and we have efficacy and safety results and then we have a label from the FDA and that label is the basis on which we sell the product in America okay pesticides that’s how the system worked except replace FDA with EPA but a few years back there were challenges in courts where people are saying oh well based on you know California prop 65 you know there’s a cancer warning so the company should have warned us that there’s cancer we’re saying wait this doesn’t make any sense we have an EPA approved label that is the that is the law of the land for America we’re not at we’re not at Liberty to promote the product in a way that’s different than what the EPA approved and it says not likely carcinogen okay we can’t just decide just like with a with an FDA label we can’t decide oh the FDA says X but we’re going to say Y and and so this is what needs fixed we’re we’re not asking for special treatment we’re asking that legislators or the courts clarify that if a manufacturer is acting in accordance with the federally approved label they’re doing what’s required it’s very simple and what leverage do you have when you’re talking to policy makers on this you know are you saying things like well this is very complicated for us it puts our business at risk in the United States maybe we’ll sell fewer of our products there and focus our attention elsewhere what what kind of Leverage do you have well I think you have to start by appealing to just basic what what’s right rule of law you know do we do we have a system that’s clear that allows for future Innovation for example if we can be sued when when we have a product that’s been deemed to be safe and effective we can be sued for not warning it causes cancer then how could anyone think think about say developing the next generation of pesticides pesticides that could be better for the environment better for nature right well why would you why would you invest a decade in a in a novel product when you can be sued without limitation when you’ve done everything right so the Hing Innovation would be your biggest argument I well I think first off do we believe in having a rule of law I think most civilized countries think yeah that’s that’s a good thing right two you don’t want to you don’t want to limit Innovation and um by the way people have to understand weeds fungi insects they evolve to become resistant to today’s pesticides and so if we want to ensure a viable food chain for tomorrow we have to have Innovation this isn’t a you know this isn’t just something to kind of make scientists happy this is innovation that the world needs glyphosate isn’t the only Legacy problem that you inherited from Santo there’s also the question of pcbs these polychlorinated bols and cases around their historic use they are known pollutant how much money are you setting aside to deal with the potential consequences of that yeah this is a situation also with a long history and there’s been a lot of money invested in in cleanups and a lot of that’s been completed you know there there are some lawsuits now and and we um we defend ourselves uh I think very appropriately on that and and we’ll continue to do do that when you look back on that 2018 decision would you say Monsanto knew what it was doing uh do you mean Bayer Monsanto Monsanto by by you know putting this acquisition did they did they see what was on Horizon that’s not really my job to to speculate about the past we we have an amazing future and uh it’s my job to work with the people of Bayer to make sure we achieve it all right let’s talk about another challenge that you’re facing and that is two drugs and two of your bestselling drugs Alto that’s a blood thinner and IAH and eye treatment that are going to run out of patents in 2026 those two drugs together earn you $7 billion a year what are your plans for filling that Gap what have you in the pipeline yeah yeah I’m I’m really excited about what we have um we have first off we have a high do IIA that’s just been approved that where that patent is much longer because it’s a it’s a different formulation it’s it’s a different version and um and it’s it’s really done fast fantastic things in terms of allowing patients to have fewer injections and we’re talking about you know injections in the eye allowing patients to maintain their Vision longer without having to go into the doctor and without having to have these injections so that that’s going to um I think carry that uh that medicine forward for a long time we also have um important medicines like nuca which is a leading treatment for PR prostate cancer which is still expanding rapidly all around the globe and then we have new products like Ellen xanit tant Ellen X anant is for um uh for vasil motor symptoms associated with menopause and as you may know um hormonal therapies are not so popular because of of certain side effects with with hormonal therapies and so there there’re literally tens of millions of women who would like to have a therapy but aren’t taking anything because of the risks with hormones and we’ve just had now three phase three studies that confirm the efficacy and safety of Ellen anent and we’re looking forward to bringing that uh for yeah women around the world next year so you have a lot of promising things in the works I do just want to ask you a more philosophical question though because your motto is health for all hunger for none we see it all over the the location here in lausen and I do Wonder because generics are undoubtedly good for consumers they make life-saving treatments cheaper and more available and yet as a company you are fighting in courts around the world to uphold these pattern how do you reconcile the idealism of that Vision with the realities of your business and do you think there’s a better way oh we we um first off we think generic generic medicines are are fantastic I mean that’s a great part of the system we have okay a lot of people don’t realize just how elegant and I I would say sort of beautifully elegant the medicine Innovation System we have in the world is because innovator companies like ours we we make some breakthrough you know curing a type of cancer or a serious chronic disease and then we we basically recoup our investment over a period of 10 12 14 years and when that ‘s up that medicine basically it becomes a legacy for the world for you know for all time at a very low cost the thing is we need to protect that 10 or 12 or 14 years because if we can’t protect that then we can’t invest in the next medicine we can’t invest in the next breakthrough and so I I like to think about it as we’re you know we’re um yeah we we’re we’re serving the world with our medicines today but we’re innovating for tomorrow and I think that’s a very reasonable tradeoff understood I want to ask you about another issue that came up at your shareholders meeting and that is your operations in South America because there is a network of NOS that have submitted a complaint to the oecd and they claim that you are not upholding your corporate responsibility in South America that you’re promoting an agricultural model that is contributing to deforestation and pollution and pushing indigenous communities forcibly away from their Homeland what is your response to that yeah I I’m afraid I find that very misguided first off deforestation mostly has to do with ranching and not growing crops row crops like what we provide uh to feed the world and if you look at a country like Brazil um you know in the 1970s Brazil did not feed their own population today Brazil feeds their own 200 million people plus another 600 million in other parts of the world without that um you would have hundreds of millions of people in the world at risk of famine and so we we believe that uh a healthy rad crop infrastructure is vital to people being able to live and so it’s also important that there are zones where there’s no Road cropping there’s nature zones and there’s uh it’s important that we protect the forests and we’re very active in promoting uh you know healthy practices land use practices for both Wildlife for nature for for green space and also for healthy crops for people but do you intervene as a company when you know these practices are not being upheld even if it’s not technically your responsibility do you do you see yourself as as culpable there for example all the the soybean cultivations in Brazil that are leading to the destruction of large areas of the Savannah which they’re not allowed to do do do you see it as your job to go in there and say hey don’t use our insecticides and pesticides in these areas that you’re supposed to be protecting I I just I start with the you know the the narrative is off here and um I I put put feeding the world as a pretty important priority and we need to protect and restore nature and I think if you if you look at our record around the world we we’re leading out on both of those things we talked earlier about regulations and inconsistencies and something that people object to is the fact that there are products that are legal in one part of the world and not in another so one example are neonicotinoids these are now illegal in the EU they’re insecticides that have been known to cause damage to bees and butterflies and other pollinators they’re allowed in much of the rest of the world including Brazil as a company do you look for the liest touch regulation or is there is there a situation that you can conceive of where you would say our standards exceed those of a national government because we know that representatives are not always scientifically literate or environmentally conscious sure it it’s a matter of course we have many many standards for which products we’ll sell where we’ll sell them that far exceed local standards and we’ve we’ve been um and again I’d invite you to to look at our um our sustainability reports our uh sustainable agriculture white papers we we’ve published extensively on this we absolutely think it’s it’s the job of our industry to develop better more uh yeah more targeted products safer products we have to take that all in balance as we work to make sure that we can put food on the table for for 8 billion people where in the world do you think that regulation is to Locks oh I I mean uh I’m not sure I could really pinpoint you know this or that country but these standards are rising all around the world and we support that we’re we’re big promoters of it I want to talk a little bit about geopolitics now because you recently went on a trip with Chancellor Olaf SCH to China um you’ve been doing business there for many years what is it like to do business in China well if you’ve if you spent time there one thing you know right away is they’re they’re very Innovation friendly okay they’ve managed to raise the the standard of living for the average person by I don’t know fivefold sixfold over the last 40 years and they’ve done that by yeah rapidly adopting new technologies um it’s it’s a very Dynamic place it’s a very competitive place as well do you think competition there takes place on a Level Playing Field I you know I would I would take our pharmaceutical business as an example you know in medicines I would say the level of competition is very high and i’ I feel like you know for the most part it’s a Level Playing Field what kind of conversations were you having with Chinese officials on that trip why were you there basically yeah I I think um we think that the the the cooperation between China and countries like Germany has been very beneficial for for both countries over time and and we’re basically we’d like to continue that because it can seem quite confusing from the outside that Germany is talking about drisking and yet foreign investment in China is at a record high do do you feel that Conflict at all as a business are you trying to diversify your Investments outside of China as well I I’m not sure we have um we don’t have really a situation to dris we don’t have a particularly large proportion of our supply supply chain depending on China and so for us we see more opportunity for example China has some very aggressive Targets in terms of um environmentally sustainable agriculture practices and we have some great products to support that like our seeds and so for us it’s really more of a dialogue about hey how can we help you meet your food security goals and your environmental sustainability goals goals with with our Innovative products now your company along with many many others suffered a lot of supply chain disruption during the pandemic and also as a result of Russia’s invasion in Ukraine you’ve had to find some workarounds tell me a little bit about what you’ve done yeah I I think um our supply chain was remarkably resilient okay probably the biggest impact that we’ve had has been Energy prices in Germany because we still produce you know a fair amount of our crop protection products in Germany and we saw Energy prices sort of doubling tripling in a very short amount of time and and so that was that was challenging for us from a competitive standpoint uh workarounds you know we it’s it’s forced us to double down on finding new sources of energy renewable energy forced us to uh again I I would say just bend over backwards to reduce power consumption which you we’re happy with that um but it it is something to watch in terms of competitiveness it’s it’s a a bit of a challenge for Germany and and uh and we certainly support efforts to ensure that we can have sustainable energy but it’s got to be affordable I want to go back and give you a chance to describe your Dynamic shared ownership Model A little bit because we didn’t get stuck into it as much as we as we could have um if I understand it correctly it’s about um minimizing layers of management giving people more autonomy to make decisions on lower levels um but also about cutting jobs yeah actually probably the clearest and and most accurate way to think about it is is kind of simple we we hire amazing people coming from Top vocational schools from universities with Scientists you know Engineers lawyers you name it and then we we put them under 10 lay layers of management and by the way when I say we that’s really industry full stop and the question is um wait how do we unleash the the creative potential of these tens of thousands of people in a way that is that is better than sticking them under 10 layers of of bureaucracy and rules and but the key thing is how do you do that without creating chaos right it’ be easy to say oh hey everyone just do you know do whatever you think is right but if you do that in an organization with 100,000 people that’ll last about a day okay so what dynamic shared ownership is it’s not a concept or a culture it is a system that says hm how can we put 95% of decisions with the people doing the work without chaos how can you do it in a coordinated way and that’s basically what the system does by by cutting those layers of management no it’s you don’t achieve it by cutting the layers of management think think about it as you you take your your mission your products your customers those are given okay now we’ve got tens of thousands of great people how can we have them being able to make decisions every day not having like oh I see an opportunity it’s going to take some resources it’s going to take some investment uh I’ve got to convince my boss and then she’s got to convince her boss and so on and then maybe if we convince four levels of managers maybe in 6 months time we’ll get a chance to do it okay how about I see an I you know I have an idea um I’m going to start working on this today how how do you get to that and the way you get to it is yeah you do have to take out a lot of layers but you also have to to create a new way of like how do decisions like that get made how are they coordinated rather than being coordinated up and down a hierarchy across the the worker in a in a division in a department and that’s basically what we’re bringing because I can imagine that on one hand it’s a very exciting time to work at Bayer because there’s change underway and people are getting more autonomy but at the same time people are scared of whether they’re going to have a job next year I mean you’ve already caught the entire internal Consulting team that’s a team that many perceived as home to some of the youngest and the brightest Minds at the company how are you balancing that when it comes to morale at the moment yeah this is nothing like a typical corporate restructuring in a typical corporate restructuring you say hm we need to save 20% of costs so you take out the or chart the or chart’s got 100 boxes on it you you cross out 20 of the hundred you announce it to everybody and then people just have to pick up the pieces this is a totally different deal we’re basically saying sort of forget about the org chart how do we make it so that every individual or small team can make the decision decisions about their own work and so um there are reductions and that is unfortunate but basically there’s a lot of upside because people have a new way to work that’s exciting and so when you look at the the people at Bayer and I I see this everywhere I go people are simultaneously they’re very excited about it and they’re concerned about their jobs but when we we focus only on sort of job security we I think we’re under selling people do you know work is work is about more than just a job work is where you’re going to spend the majority of your your life and we want people’s thing they’re going to spend the majority of their life doing to be exciting you know we want it to be fun and challenging and not oh I spend my life going to meetings where we talk about which PowerPoint presentation slides we should use to try to convince our bosses to let us do the thing that we know ought to be done so it’s it’s it’s a very uh high energy activity I would say and everywhere I go at Bayer I mean people are fired up about it the people that are doing it now we have probably five or 6 thousand people that are living in the new system and if you talk to them what you will hear is they’re they’re astounded like wow why didn’t we do this before I mean this is this is amazing I didn’t think work could be like this and that was my experience before I came as well I’ve been I’ve been working with these types of models for seven or eight years and it’s it’s there’s a painful disruption at the beginning but once you start going nobody wants to go back nobody wants to go back to the old you know the old hierarchy you mentioned that we spend the majority of our lives at work which I think is true but there is also life outside of work and I’m wondering what you do to wind down we were talking earlier that you’re not allowed to skateboard anymore your wife won’t let you because you broke your femur after 50 years on the board I believe and what do you do to relax um H well I like to read a lot and I like to bike I went for a nice bike ride yesterday we had lovely sunny weather in in Northwest Germany and um yeah spent a lot of time with my wife our kids are gone they’re they’re off the payroll even so but uh yeah and and hang out with friends and also we should say that since you became CEO of firey the team here verusen has won the Bundesliga so I’m not saying correlation and causation but it’s it’s just a fact yeah yeah well certainly has nothing to do with any advice I’ve given them about how to play football because um yeah I I I really have nothing to offer there but I am a big fan and I’ve been enjoying the games including last Saturday we had another you know shocking uh sort of goal in in extra time and and a lot of celebrations well the world needs its fond as well Bill Anderson thank you so much for speaking to us today my pleasure Kate
It’s been described as one of the worst corporate acquisitions in history. When German company Bayer bought US seed-maker Monsanto for $63 billion in 2018, it inherited billions of dollars worth of lawsuits from farmers who claimed its weedkiller, Roundup had caused their cancer. Today Bayer’s entire market value is less than half of what it spent to buy Monsanto. DW Business sat down with Bayer CEO Bill Anderson to ask him how he plans to turn his company’s fortunes around and how it felt to face shareholders for the first time. The discussion covers Bayer`s struggles to deal with the litigation costs linked to Roundup, the looming loss of patents on two of its best-selling drugs, accusations about its operations in South America and the company`s dealings with China. Bill Anderson also describes his new “Dynamic Shared Ownership” model, with which he is hoping to drive innovation, bring down costs and speed up processes within the company.
#bayer #monsanto #takeover
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40 comments
You reap what you sow. Greed made them pursue companies that had all kinds of red flags and sirens surrounding them.
the ZOGgiest of media features the world champ of nonselfaware deviltry .. .ramifications be damned along with 'alt' interps of the 'bottom line'
Thyroid disease, Crohn’s disease, psoriasis, plus 100 other diseases.
roundup, is making us very sick
Poor little big pharma. Legit crime
101 on how to get rid of toxic assets and move money from Germany to our US "friends"
Wow this is really not up to usual DW editorial standards. This was more of an advertisement than an incisive interview. Very disappointing.
hog at the trough
Feeding the world? I can grow more food on 1/3 of the land that they use… and i am doing it sustainably while supporting wildlife and diversity
Gaslighter.
They should write a book: How to loose money.
Mr. Anderson seems to be very well spoken dude. In most ceo interviews I've seen, the ceo always appeared terrified to answer questions, but Bill has some energy.
I worked for Roche, he made a fool of himself moving to Bayer. What a loser company
Great interview
glyphosate is terrible for health causing intestinal dysbiosis
Oh it’s so sad . So many nice questions and none of them answered . You know that the world is in decadence when the people that rule are too small and tiny . Exactly the opposite of the role model. Sad .
How much did they pay you for this piece ?
As a US farmer who was damaged and lost organic certification from Dicamba drift, the irony of this CEO calling for “rule of law”, is beyond the pale. Shame on DW for platforming this hypocrisy. Understand that the damage Monsanto wrought will not be whitewashed or legislatively denied👍🏻.
Nice try for a dog and pony show, but I DO NOT BUY IT !!
The overabundance of many, many chemicals (of which glyphosate is one) in our food systems and environments is a problem. However, I urge folks to look at the efficacy and toxicity of the chemicals that would be used in its stead, including many "organic" alternatives for both the user and environment. With widespread dependency on these chemicals for right on time, yields based ag profits, producers are often left to just look for the next thing. Without more widespread adoption of farming practices that require far less or zero of these chems, the problem chemical will shift like a game of musical chairs. Toxicity = dose x frequency of exposure. It is the later that is more troubling when one takes into account the ubiquity of use of glyphosate and other widely used agrichemicals. Instances of herbicide resistance simply compound the problem. To complicate things further these chems are a huge help in selectively targetting invasive plant species where a workforce can't be found or funded to continuously manage large expanses of land. This is an economic and land use issue combined with corporate spin, categorical thinking on the part of proponents and opponents of chems, and using the wrong tools in the wrong ways, in the wrong places (blanket management practices). There isn't a one size fits all answer to these issues while at the same time the highest level of scrutiny needs to persist until solutions are found.
Money's a helluva drug
Wow, DW is stooping really low to be shilling in this bare-faced manner for Bayer. Really soft-ball questions with no follow-ups.
I came for evil Corporate talk I got evil Corporate talk
Personally me thinks that he is lying.
And what about all the lobbying both Monsanto and Bayer do in the US. And which party was in power when Monsanto was granted that label?
They try to save a big sinking ship with desperate attempts.
With his leadership and vision, I do not see any brighter future for Bayer.
I am speaking of 20 years of experience in global pharmaceutical industry.
He is very well versed in US-like corporate double speak. That's my only compliment.
I get trying, but I think there was pretty much no information gained by the interview in the end. It should have used in parts for a proper documentation instead. Well, guess that would lead into an access question. Doubt there would have been an interview agreed to in an investigative journalism context.
What a softball interview. What purpose does this actually serve the viewer, if I wanted to I could just go on the company website and read all the pr releases that are posted there to get the same information that was released in this interview. I understand things shouldn't always be confrontational but if you're just going to act as another corporate mouthpiece than you shouldn't even bothering interviewing these executives.
How did Monsanto manage cases all this while? How did the cases come on the horizon all of a sudden
What an immoral person.
they busy trying to bribe politicians to exempt them from liability.
You can hardly blame German Bayer for acquiring Republican Monsanto; with Monsanto's proven track-record of Unleashing Endocrine Disruptors, DDT, Agent Orange Glyphosate, etc., together with destroying produce with GMOs and contractually destroying American Farmers. It was simply too deliciously thrilling not to. Kindred souls.
Lotta hate in the comments, i dunno i think this guy was pretty honest and correct about how this sort of innovating chemical giant HAS to run to serve the world
I am a subscriber to DW as I enjoy your incisive interviews and analyses.However, this interview and its lack of inciseveness on key issues was outstandingly below standard as it didn't delve deeper into his superficial, brazen answers that did not address the questions asked. He was left off the hook easily. Destroying the Amazonian forest, the Planet's lungs in order to feed the population, Bayers priority, according to the CEO, is as short sighted a strategy as it is, respectfully, nonsensical, if not dumb. The interviewer carried on with her questions..
Bayer: let's buy this company that once helped develop Agent Orange
Someone: well, your country once helped gas people… might not be a good look. And, there's a huge chance their current product cause cancer
Bayer: trivialities. Also, the laws suck.
The R&D recoupment argument does make sense – after all, why would anyone take risks losing money in R&D for giving it all away to the competitors?
If people aren't happy about this, they should push for goverments to do the R&D and take the risks associated with it itself rather than proxying through the private sector.
I think it was very hard to get this interview with these critical, well phrased and researched questions through!
The compromise was obviously to give as much time as needed to the answers.
What came out feels kind of truthful:
The substantial questions could not be substantially answered. There is little said besides corporate blabla. If you have nothing to say you can speak as long as you want I guess …
It should be pretty clear that Bayer needs a miracle right now, and how this CEO envisions the future of Bayer is hardly how I would see a responsible and innovative biotech company of the future. Acquiring Monsanto in the first place tells more than thousand words. Imo this is well deserved, sorry not sorry
I think she’s a great journalist.
Not unlikely that Bayer will be one of the most valuable companies in a decade or so when they can really leverage their business model. It's genius. They first toxify food with their pesticides to make people sick with chronic conditions and then they sell drugs that make these illnesses a little more manageable. Their internal slogan should be: "From cradle to grave".
Greed