Bayer defies critics with $62 billion Monsanto offer

Reuters - German drugs and crop chemicals group Bayer AG has offered to buy U.S. seeds company Monsanto for $62 billion in cash, defying some of its own shareholders in a bid to grab the top spot in a fast-consolidating farm supplies industry.

Monsanto Co's stock ended trading up 4.4 percent at $106 on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday, well below Bayer's $122 per share cash offer price, in a sign that it faces a tough task convincing the St. Louis-based company to sign off on the deal.

Monsanto has said it would review the proposal. Some analysts have suggested Bayer might still have to pay more.

"The price that has now been disclosed is at the upper limit and it is just about economical. Should it rise further, which is to be assumed, the takeover will become increasingly unattractive," said Markus Manns, a fund manager at Union Investment, Bayer's 14th biggest investor

Other Bayer shareholders have also responded coldly to the company's pursuit, condemned by one Bayer investor as "arrogant empire-building" when news of the proposal emerged last week.

The unsolicited proposal would be the largest all-cash takeover on record, according to Thomson Reuters data, just ahead of InBev’s $60.4 billion offer for Anheuser-Busch in June 2008.

The move would also eclipse a planned combination of peers Dow Chemical and DuPont's agriculture units and comes just three weeks after Werner Baumann took over as Bayer CEO.