Fun fact, Bayer bought Monsanto last year.
Metrics beyond "observables" -- assets, infrastructure, patents -- seem to be impossible, when considering investments, i.e. how much of these values are pure speculation (?). On the other hand -- these lawsuits were also "observable", but not really "measurable".
As soon as a foreign company bought Monsanto, that is.
I don't really mind the verdict itself, but the timing is more than a bit suspicious.
Yeah, that's definitely a bit weird. It's similar to when a government entity in the USA suddenly discovered the Diesel cheating just when big foreign car manufacturers had large successes in the US market. Even though it was made to look like it in the news, Volkswagen wasn't the biggest perpetrator [0]. And currently the US government puts major pressure onto the DTAG-Sprint merger and constantly comes up with new requirements, e.g. now they want DTAG to stop buying Huawei products world wide [1].
[0]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Nitrogen...
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sprint-corp-m-a-t-mobile-...
This is on top of the CEO of Bayer stating to the news media that he knew about Monsanto having a bad image. On top of the fact that Bayer sold HIV blood and supplied chemical during WWII for the Nazi.
IG Farben did a lot more then that. Among others buying people from concentration camps for medical studies which none of the "testsubjects" survived.
I was a little confused, until I remembered "Oh yeah, right, Bayer bought Monsanto."