Monsanto Company has “approached Syngenta AG about a takeover,” according to the Bloomberg Business news service.
In a news report released Friday, April 30, Bloomberg reporters said the companies had been in discussion recently, which could be seen as follow up to preliminary talks that occurred between the two companies in 2014.
The earlier discussions lead nowhere because there are a number of hurdles to overcome including strategic fit for the two businesses worldwide, antitrust issues especially in the U.S., establishing a unified headquarter operation and divestiture of overlapping assets.
Bloomberg reports Syngenta has a “market value” of about $31 billion. Even though any discussions are supposedly secret, Bloomberg said it had two sources of knowledge that were not identified. And even though the discussions are secret, rumors seem to have fueled stock trading as both Monsanto and Syngenta stock surged in New York trading on Thursday.
Monsanto is a seed giant with some crop protection assets while Syngenta AG is a broad-based crop protection company with some seed business, which is a mile-high view of the two companies’ operations.
Source: www.agprofessional.com