http://www.reuters.com/article/us-monsanto-m-a-bayer-deal-idUSKCN11K128
German drugs and crop chemicals company Bayer has won over U.S. seeds firm Monsanto with an improved takeover offer of $66 billion including debt, ending months of wrangling after increasing its bid for a third time. The $128 a share deal announced on Wednesday, up from Bayer's previous offer of $127.50 a share, is the biggest of the year so far and the largest cash bid on record.
The transaction will create a company commanding more than a quarter of the combined world market for seeds and pesticides in a fast-consolidating farm supplies industry. However, competition authorities are likely to scrutinize the tie-up closely, and some of Bayer's own shareholders have been critical of a takeover plan which they say is too expensive and risks neglecting the company's pharmaceutical business.
"Bayer's competitors are merging, so not doing this deal would mean having a competitive disadvantage," said Markus Manns, a fund manager at Union Investment, one of Bayer's top 12 investors, according to ThomsonReuters data.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Thursday September 15 2016, @04:39PM
Companies this size should not exist. Bayer is definitely in the "too big to fail" category.
I'm not normally one for government intervention in the market, but: beyond a certain size, mergers should be forbidden. Beyond some other certain size, companies should be forced to split or divest.
The same could be said of governments. Local government generally works well, if only because you know where the idiots live. Above a few million, well, governments may also be too big to exist. Brexit is good. Scexit (Scotland exit) would be even better. No entities, corporate or governmental, with a total value/turnover/whatever over a few $billion.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 15 2016, @09:06PM
The bodycount isn't high enough to institute it, and the odds of being able to keep globalization actors from simply reamassing corrupt politicians from the smaller governmetns back into a bigger one are not odds in normal people's favor (unless, as mentioned above, bodycount goes up, so nobody is willing to risk it.)
Governments do need to be held accountable, but we're long past the point where rule of law will get us there. That is not saying to replace it with anarchy, but rather careful selection of the most corrupt members of each nation's politico and public examples being made of them to keep the rest in line.