- Bayer AG’s $66 billion acquisition of Monsanto Co. is producing a big payday for a small advisory firm founded last year by a team of bankers who left Perella Weinberg Partners in an acrimonious split.
- Ducera Partners LLC, led by Michael Kramer, is advising Monsanto, and is in line for at least half of the $110 million in estimated fees going to the seller’s bankers, according to acquisition consultant Freeman & Co. Morgan Stanley also advised Monsanto.
- New York-based Ducera’s website lists nine employees, eight of whom previously worked at Perella Weinberg. Kramer, Derron Slonecker and two other former members of the firm’s restructuring group -- Joshua Scherer and Adam Verost -- were fired in 2015, then sued the investment bank for wrongful termination. The team secured work advising a group of Puerto Rico’s bondholders that summer.
- Bayer corporate crimes: https://corporatewatch.org/company-profiles/bayer-ag-corporate-crimes
Bayer will acquire Monsanto for $128 per share in cash, according to a statement released by the companies. That price represents a 44 percent premium to Monsanto’s stock on May 9, the day before Bayer’s interest in a deal first surfaced. Including the assumption of debt, the transaction is valued at more than $66 billion.
Roundup herbicide at a Monsanto production plant in Antwerp, Belgium, in June.
The deal is among the largest German corporate takeovers of an American company, and would make Bayer the world’s largest supplier of seeds and farm chemicals, according to a recent note by Argus Research. But it faces the risk of government opposition at a time when regulators have not been shy in quashing transactions over antitrust concerns.
Bayer has also settled on a $2B break-up fee for the deal, which is expected to close by the end of 2017.
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