At a difficult Bayer Annual General Meeting on 26 April, 55.5% of its shareholders vote against absolving CEO Werner Baumann and other managers of responsibility for their actions in the takeover of Monsanto in 2018. The vote was followed by an emergency session of the company’s supervisory board. The no confidence vote has no precedent in German postwar corporate history. Investors were angered by a 38% fall in Bayer’s share price since its acquisition of rival Monsanto. By now Bayer was now worth just the US$63bn it paid for the US seed giant. Bayer faces mounting legal problems over glyphosate, a herbicide marketed by Monsanto in the past and linked with cancer. Bayer is facing 13,400 glyphosate-related legal claims. Baumann has insisted that “management acted conscientiously” in assessing the liability risk around Monsanto.
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