here in these, on the border between france and spain with nicole before traveling to serve yet and hungry later in the week. and that is all we have time full thanks so much for watching dw news. hoping you can join us at the top of the next hour. the twist. i know i might just do it and i'm hoping dw new podcasts don't straighten them out. but there's no actually of, i'll know, join us as we travel around your, facing the history of every day of that. and that's something right around the world. and i need to talk to you back, just a subscriber id. listen to pop, gosh, then we'll take you along to the right.

the, you can turn around the company, you can solve your litigation problem, you can do that, or you can break up, but don't think you're going to do that all at once. it's been described as one of the worst corporate acquisitions history, when term and company they are both us seed, major monsanto for $63000000000.00 in 2018. inherited billions of dollars worth of loss. so it's from farmers who claimed it's weed killer. round up had cost their cancer. today, bayers entire market value is less than half of what it's spent to buy monsanto. i spoke with bay or ceo bill anderson, about his plans to turn his company's fortunes around on how it felt to face shareholders. for the 1st time, you always have to separate sort of there's where you were, there's where you are and there's where you're going. and i feel, and i,

and i see this with our major shareholders in life, and i'm talking with them on a very regular basis. they, they own our stock, not because of where we were and not because of where we are. but because of where they can see we're going, you know, we, we have these 3 amazing businesses, each of them. this is playing a vital role in the world for people, for patients, for farmers, for eaters, that's all of us. and we have some challenges, right? we have a high level that we have the bureaucracy, our farm or pipeline is, is sort of skewed where the early stage, wherever is, we'd like it to be later. right. and, and, and we have this litigation situation in the us. and so we, we have to basically navigate driving the businesses forward achieving this mission that we have. but at the same time, we've got to tackle those for challenges. and that's basically our, our major shareholders are all on board with this. we communicated this to the

capital markets already about 6 weeks ago, and they're basically saying, yeah, let's do this. a lot of people were expected to break up the company though to maybe sell the consumer health division. yeah, and you've got comp, science, consumer health and pharma. you have a real guy doing that in the future. but why did you decide not to do it now? yeah, yeah. because of the situation i mention, but these 4 big challenges, it's really clear. we need to put a 100 percent of our energy into, as i said, driving the 3 businesses and solving the 4 challenges. that's a lot. okay. you know, most people try to keep it to like 3 things. we got 7. and now if you, if you decide that you're going to break up, that actually becomes all encompassing. all absorbing, i've spoken to the leaders of most of the major companies have done these break ups in the last few years. and that's basically, they told me they said pay, you can turn around the company, you can solve your litigation problem,

you can do that, or you can break up, but don't think you're going to do that all at once because that's a, that's basically a full month full employment act for everybody. when you decide to do a break up. let's talk about life a site that and that's the active ingredient in the weed killer. randolph, which you acquired from monsanto. there are obviously diverging opinions even within the medical community. but broadly speaking, regulators are on your side in the conviction vast randolph, when used correctly, does not cause cancer. i am wondering that if you have the science on your side with this, how is it that you're spending tens of billions of dollars settling these cases? yeah, it's a very complex situation because we're, we're dealing with the, the, the torque, the product, liability courts in america. and, you know, it's hard to say it's as if the question about the safety of glass to say is

getting re examined in, you know, a 100 different courts, but not by scientific experts and not by, you know, medical experts. and so it just leads to very strange outcomes, you know, so, so if you look at any, any assemblage of the facts, whether you look at animal studies of life for state, whether you look at these population based studies it's, it's clear this, this is not a yeah, this is not a product that's causing cancer. you want to put an end to the system in the united states that allows these cases to be brought forward in the 1st place. because there is inconsistency between the federal and the state level. in terms of regulation, you've seen lobbying members of congress to that and what reaction have you got from them as well? when we have conversations with people, with farmers, with policy makers, with the general public and, and we're sort of saying, hey, we have a system in the us regarding pesticides that, that's really broken. you know,

for example, we, we make medicines when we study a medicine we, we have clinical trials that we have advocacy and safety results. and then we have a label from the f d a. and that label is the basis on which we sell the product in america. okay. pesticides. that's how the system worked. except replace f d a with epa. but a few years back. there were challenges in courts where people are saying, oh, well, based on, you know, california prop 65, you know, there's a cancer warning. so the company should've warned us that there's cancer. we're saying we this doesn't make any sense. we have an epa approved label, that is the that is the law of the land for america. we're not, we're not at liberty to promote the product in a way that's different than what the epa is approved. and it says not likely, carson engine. okay, we can't just decide, just like with a, with an f d a

a label. we can't decide, oh, the f, the a says x, but we're going to say why? and so this is what needs fix. we're not asking for special treatment. we're asking that legislators or the courts clarify that information factor is acting in accordance with the federal improve label. they're doing what's required. it's very simple while leverage. so you have, when you're talking to policy makers on this, you know, are you saying things like, well, this is very complicated for us, it puts our business up risk in the united states. maybe we'll sell fewer of our products there and focus our attention elsewhere. what, what kind of effort you have? well, i think you have to start by appealing to just basic what's, what's right. rule of law. you know, do we, do? we have a system that's clear that allows for future innovation. for example, if we can be sued. when, when we have a product that's been deemed to be safe and effective,

we can be sued for not warning that causes cancer. then how could anyone think about say, developing the next generation pesticides, pesticides that could be better for the environment better for nature, right? well, why would you, why would you invest a decade in a, in a novel product when you can be sued without limitation, when you've done everything right? a licensed agent is the only legacy problem that you inherited from months on to. there's also the question of p. c. b's is probably car and i says buys knowles and spaces around their historic and they are known pollutants. how much money are you setting aside to deal with the potential consequences? yeah, this is a situation also with a long history and there's been a lot of money invested in, in clean ups and a lot of that's been completed. you know, there, there are some lawsuits now and, and we, we defend ourselves. i think very appropriately on that, and we'll continue to do that. when you look back on that 2018 decision,

would you say monsanto knew what it was doing? what do you mean they are monsanto on time to buy, you know, purchasing this acquisition did. they did, they see what was on the horizon. that's not really my job to, to speculate about the past. we have an amazing future, and it's my job to work with people there and make sure we achieve it. all right, let's talk about another challenge that you're facing and that is 2 drugs. um, to your best selling drugs, the rialto that's a blood thinner and alia, and i treatment that are going to run out of problems in 2026. those 2 drugs together for a new $7000000000.00 a year. one of your plans for filling that gap. one of you in the pipeline. yeah, yeah. i'm, i'm really excited about what we have. we have 1st off, we have a high dose. i. leah that's just been approved that where that patton is much longer because it's a, it's a different formulation. it's a, it's a different version. and, and it's,

it's really done faster. fantastic things in terms of allowing patients to have fewer injections and we're talking about, you know, injections in the i allowing patients to maintain their vision longer without having to go into the doctor without having to have these injections. so that, that's going to, i think, carry that, that medicine forward for a long time. we also have important medicines like new baca, which is a leading treatment for prostate cancer, which is still expanding rapidly all around the globe. and then we have new products like gallons. anna to ellen's in a town is for of, for diesel motors, symptoms associated with mental pause. and as you may know, hormonal therapies are not so popular because of certain side effects with, with her model therapies. and so they're, they're literally tens of millions of women who would like to have a therapy, but aren't taking anything because of the risks with hormones. and we've just had

now 3 phase 3 studies that confirm the advocacy and safety of owens. and it's out and we're looking for him to bring him out for yeah, women around the world next year. so you have a lot of promising things in the words. i do just want to ask you a more philosophical question though, because you're ma, so is health for all hung up right now we see it all over the location here. labor costs, and i'm, i do wonder because generics are on that would be good for consumers. they make life saving treatments cheaper and more readily available. and yet, as a company, you are fighting in courts around the world to uphold these posits how do you reconcile the idealism of that vision with the realities of your business? and do you think there's a better way? oh we, we, 1st off, we think generic, generic medicines are, are fantastic. mean that's a great part of the system we have, okay? a lot of people don't realize just how elegant, and i'd say sort of beautifully elegant, the medicine innovation system we have in the world is because the innovator

companies like ours we, we make some breakthrough. you know, during that type of cancer or a serious chronic disease. and then we, we basically recoup our investment over a period of 101214 years. and when that time's up, that medicine basically becomes a legacy for the world for, you know, for all time at a very low cost. the thing is we need to protect that 10 or 12 or 14 years because if we can't protect that, then we can invest in the next madison. we can invest in the next breakthrough. and so i like to think about it as we're, you know, we're, yeah, we're, we're, we're serving the world with our medicines today, but we're innovating for tomorrow and i think that's a very reasonable trade off. we talked earlier, advice, regulations, and inconsistencies, and something that people object to is the fact that there are products that are legal in one part of the world and not in another. so one example or in the cause

of noise, these are now illegal in the you there insecticides that have known to cause damage to these and butterflies, other pollinators they're allowed in most of the rest of the world, including for sale as a company. do you look for the lysis touch regulation or is there is there and it situation that you can conceive of where you would say our standards exceed those of a national government because we know that representatives are not always scientifically nitrous, for environmentally conscience. sure, but it's a matter of course, we have many, many standards for which products will sell, where we'll sell them that far exceed local standards and we've, we've been and again, i'd invite you to, to look at our, um, our sustainability reports, our sustainable agriculture white papers we, we've published extensively on this. we absolutely think it's, it's the job of our industry to develop better, more, get more targeted products,

safer products. we have to take that all in balance as we work to make sure that we can put food on the table for, for a building and people. i want to talk a little bit about politics and advocacy recently went on a trip with tom. so they're all excited to china. i'm doing business there for many years. what is it like to do business in china? well, if you, if you spend time there, one thing you know right away is they're, they're very innovation friendly. okay. they've managed to raise the standard of living for the average person by i don't know, 5 fold, 6 fold over the last 40 years. and they've done that by yeah, rapidly adopting new technologies. so it's, it's a very dynamic place. it's a very competitive place as well. do you think competition that takes place on a level playing field? of course, you know, i would, i would take our pharmaceutical business as an example. you know, in medicines i would say the level of competition is very high. and i've,

i feel like, you know, for the most part, it's a level playing field. fill on this and thank you so much for speaking to us today . my pleasure, kate, the berlin, 90 years ago, on the 10th of may 1933 terms, students through tens of thousands of folks into a huge on fire right here where i'm standing in the center fill in n d. that makes the next big big about an hour and that was just the beginning.