The company, which was founded by hedge fund veteran Jeffrey Ubben in 2020, has acquired a 0.83 percent stake in the Leverkusen-based agricultural and pharmaceutical company, as Inclusive Capital Partners announced in a voting rights notification on Monday. This gave Bayer shares a boost at the start of the week: they were the biggest winner in the leading DAX index, rising by more than four percent to EUR 52.88. Inclusive Capital Partners' block of shares is thus worth around 430 million euros. Bayer did not wish to comment on the investment.

As reported by the Financial Times, Ubben, who is known on Wall Street as a rather cautious activist investor, already has the support of at least one of Bayer's largest shareholders to push for changes at the company. "Ubben is someone we would definitely vote for if he were up for election to Bayer's supervisory board," the newspaper quoted David Herro, chief investment officer of Harris Associates, as saying. According to data from Refinitiv, this investment company is Bayer's third-largest shareholder with just under three percent. "Management has not shown much willingness to change the status quo," Herro said, pointing out that Bayer trades at a discount to the competition in each of its three divisions.

Bayer has always rejected recurring speculation about a split-up of the agricultural and pharmaceutical group: These would not increase the value of the business. This is not the first time the Leverkusen-based company has had to deal with an activist investor. In 2019, the hedge fund Elliott built up a stake of around two percent and put pressure on the company in the wake of the wave of lawsuits in the USA over the alleged carcinogenic effects of the weedkiller glyphosate.

Bayer brought the lawsuits with the 63 billion dollar takeover of glyphosate developer Monsanto. The company is now only worth a good 49 billion euros on the stock exchange. The Group is still a long way from its former share price of over 100 euros in summer 2018, even though Bayer has recently won six glyphosate lawsuits in a row.

(Report by Patricia Weiß. Edited by Olaf Brenner. If you have any queries, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets).)