Two giants of the farming and chemical industries agreed to merge Wednesday in a $66 billion deal: the U.S.’s Monsanto and Germany’s Bayer, the original maker of aspirin. It’s the year’s biggest deal and will create the world’s largest supplier of seeds and farm chemicals, with $26 billion in combined annual revenue from agriculture. If the merger goes through, it will combine two companies with a long and storied history that shaped what we eat, the drugs we take and how we grow our food.

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Heroin, Nazis, and Agent Orange: Inside the $66 Billion Merger of the Year

Backstory: Two friends making dyes from coal-tar started Bayer in 1863, and it developed into a chemical and drug company famous for introducing heroin as a cough remedy in 1896, then aspirin in 1899. The company was a Nazi contractor during World War II and used forced labor. Today, the firm based in Leverkusen, Germany, makes drugs and has a crop science unit, which makes weed and bug killers. Its goal is to dominate the chemical and drug markets for people, plants and animals…

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Behind Bayer-Monsanto, an Odd Couple Out to Rule the World

Last December Dow Chemical Co. and DuPont Co. agreed to merge. Then in February China National Chemical Corp. concluded a deal to buy Switzerland’s Syngenta AG for $43 billion. Bayer itself had already been exploring a deal for Monsanto since mid-2015, when Monsanto’s efforts to buy Syngenta were foundering…

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Source: Bloomberg

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