Bayer pays USD 10 bln of Roundup litigation compensations

Bayer has reached verbal agreements to resolve most of 125,000 lawsuits of the Roundup litigation in the US, Bloomberg writes.

The agreements cover approximately 50,000-85,000 claims and will cost the company approximately USD 10 bln. Payments will vary from a few thousand to several million each.

"Overcoming the Roundup scandal has become a top priority for CEO Werner Baumann, who in 2018 orchestrated the USD 63 bln Monsanto takeover, a broad spectrum glyphosate-based herbicide company. So far, glyphosate is the most popular herbicide in the U.S.," the message reads.

As reported, the surge of Roundup claims, along with three big U.S. court losses, hammered the company’s stock, wiping tens of billions of dollars from the market value and prompting shareholders to issue Baumann an unprecedented rebuke last spring.

"A settlement of all U.S. lawsuits for $10 bln should be a major share price trigger for Bayer," Markus Mayer, an analyst at Baader Bank, informed Bloomberg.

In August 2018, Monsanto was ordered to pay USD 289 mln in damages in the first of thousands of U.S. lawsuits over alleged links between a weedkiller and cancer.

Lawsuits are largely based on a 2015 conclusion by the World Health Organization’s cancer arm, which classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”