In a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Montana Sen. Jon Tester says the government should deny on antitrust grounds Bayer’s proposed $66 billion purchase of Monsanto, given that it would result in a company controlling nearly 30 percent of the world’s seed market and a quarter of pesticide sales.
“The proposed acquisition would result in Bayer possessing unprecedented and unfair market power over farm inputs,” wrote Tester. “If the department completes a sufficient review of the deal, the negative impacts on our food supply will become clear and the case to reject the acquisition will be strong.” Tester, a Democrat and a farmer, apparently is the first senator to call for the government to overrule the union of the companies.
The Bayer-Monsanto deal, announced two weeks ago, is the third blockbuster transaction since last December in the seed and ag-chemical sector. Dow and DuPont were the first to announce a merger, followed by state-owned ChemChina’s purchase of Swiss-based Syngenta. If all three of the mergers are permitted, the six companies that dominate the sector would emerge as a “big three.”