Thursday, September 22nd 2016
Courtesy of Brownfield Ag News
Five of the six ag companies seeking to consolidate into three have told the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning that they are driven to innovate to survive and that will not change if the deals are approved. Robb Fraley, executive vice president of Monsanto which has agreed to be purchased by Bayer, says the two companies won’t cause any anti-competition problems, “You know, these are complementary companies that have very different R&D programs. Ours are seeds and traits and data science and Bayer operates in crop chemicals. So, one of the attractions is that the deal has very little overlap.” Senate Judiciary Chairman, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and members of the committee said that any one of these proposed deals, taken by itself, would not be as challenging as all of them happening together. Absent from the hearing was ChemChina, which is in a deal to purchase Syngenta.