Bayer shares pummeled after ruling against firm's herbicide
By Alexander Bueso
Date: Wednesday 20 Mar 2019
(Sharecast News) - Shares of Bayer were unwanted on Wednesday after a California jury issued a preliminary ruling against the German chemicals maker.
Overnight, in the first phase of a trial in San Francisco in the case Hardeman versus Monsanto, a jury found that the company's glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup had provoked non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in Edwin Hardeman, a local resident who had used the product on his property for decades.
A second phase in the same trial, which was due to start on Wednesday, would determine liability and damages.
News of the verdict had sent shares of the company down by 12.11% to €60.88 as of 1154 GMT.
Reacting to the news, Bayer said it was "disappointed" with the jury's decision and remained confident that glyphosate-based herbicides did not cause cancer.
Bayer also emphasised that the ruling would not have any impact on other cases involving Roundup as each one had its own factual and legal circumstances.
The company had not set aside any provisions against adverse rulings and some observers believed that settling all of them might cost Bayer in excess of $5bn.
"We have great sympathy for Mr. Hardeman and his family, but an extensive body of science supports the conclusion that Roundup was not the cause of his cancer. Bayer stands behind these products and will vigorously defend them," the company said in a statement.
Wednesday's ruling followed another in California, during the previous year, that was handed down in favour of a former school groundskeeper who was eventually awarded $78.6m in damages.
To take note of, according to some analysts, continued share price falls might expose Bayer to calls from activist investors to break the company up into separate pharmaceutical and crop chemical units, Bloomberg reported.
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