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Bayer in CropScience talks
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July 10, 2001: 3:13 a.m. ET
German drug company in exclusive talks to buy Aventis CropScience
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LONDON (CNN) - Bayer, Europe's second-largest drugs and chemicals company, is in exclusive talks to buy Aventis CropScience.
The German company said on Tuesday it is in negotiating with owners French drug company Aventis (PAVE), which holds 76 percent of CropScience, and drugs firm Schering, (FSCH) which owns the rest.
"Our crop protection business is a core activity of Bayer," Chairman Manfred Schneider said. "By merging the two businesses, we would create one of the world's leading companies in the business."
Bayer, which makes products ranging from the drug Aspirin to chemicals for industry and fragrances for perfumes, pipped its bigger rival, BASF, and several others to win exclusive talks to acquire the unit that has been valued at between  6 billion and 8 billion ($5.1 billion and $6.8 billion).
Aventis's crop science business makes a range of products for farmers, such as herbicide, fungicide, seed and insecticide.
The business employs about 15,300 people in 120 countries and had sales of 4 billion in 2000. That would double Bayer's sales at its crop protection business, which had sales of 2.5 billion.
The Franco-German drug maker unveiled plans last November to narrow its focus on pharmaceuticals by selling its slow-growing agricultural products unit. A final deal is not expected to be completed until early 2002.
Rivals of Aventis, which was formed in 1999 by the union of France's Rhone-Poulenc and Germany's Hoechst, have already separated their farm-chemicals businesses to trade as separate companies.
Anglo-Swedish AstraZeneca and Swiss drug firm Novartis floated their joint agrochemicals interests as a new company, Syngenta AG.
The Aventis CropScience business – nearly one-quarter owned by Schering – has been hit by controversy over its StarLink genetically modified corn.
Aventis may be vulnerable to liability claims after StarLink corn, which has been approved for use in animal but not human feed, was found in consumer foods.
The final sale price could vary by some 300 million depending on whether Bayer chooses to take on that liability. 
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