FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Bayer AG has not offered to pay billions of dollars to settle claims in the United States related to the Roundup herbicide, mediator Ken Feinberg said, after a report of such a settlement had driven shares as much as 11% higher.
“Bayer has not proposed paying $8 billion to settle all the US Roundup cancer claims. Such a statement is pure fiction,” Feinberg said in an email on Friday. “Compensation has not even been discussed in the global mediation discussions.”
The shares, which had shed some gains before Feinberg’s statement, declined further and were trading only 2% above Thursday’s close at 1335 GMT.
Bayer, which acquired Roundup and other glyphosate-based weedkillers as part of its $63 billion takeover of Monsanto last year, declined to comment on the initial Bloomberg news report and on Feinberg’s response.
Bayer’s Chief Executive Werner Baumann last week said the company would consider settling with U.S. plaintiffs only on reasonable terms, and if it “achieves finality of the overall litigation”.
He added at the time the group was “constructively engaging” in a court-ordered process with mediator Feinberg on the cases heard in federal court. Most of the pending cases, however, have been filed with U.S. state courts.
Bayer shares have lost more than a third, or roughly 30 billion euros ($34 billion), in value since last August when a California jury in the first such lawsuit found that Monsanto should have warned of the alleged cancer risks from Roundup.
The German drugs and pesticides company has engaged in negotiations with plaintiffs’ lawyers, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Bayer said this week that the
