THE GMO SCRAPBOOK: IG FARBENSANTO NOT TO BE, AT LEAST, NOT FOR THE MOMENT…
Still Losing: Creditors Change Monsanto’s Investor Rating to “Negative”
Now, here's what caught my attention in this article:
"Approximately $8 billion in debt securities are affecting a popular investor’s service decision about one of biotech’s biggest. Investing credit rating company Moody’s has affirmed that Monsanto’s new rating is being downgraded from ‘neutral’ to ‘negative’ following Syngenta’s announcement that it has refused Monsanto’s unsolicited bid of CHF449 per Syngenta share in a combination of cash and stock.And then there's this trenchant observation:
"Monsanto’s offer would have valued another biotech bully at a mere US$20 billion paid in cash. For investors in Monsanto, Moody’s calls their aggressive attempt at takeover a “heightened event risk” due to their more aggressive financial policy.
"Indeed – Monsanto’s financial policy seems to match their aggressive actions elsewhere – from bullying federal judges to trying to orchestrate a trade monopoly through the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)."
"However, Moody’s doesn’t seem to take into account the fact that consumers and farmers are more increasingly refusing GM products – whether it’s the glyphosate that Monsanto sells via Round Up or the Round Up Ready crops they push on farmers throughout the world.And then finally, this:
"There have been increasing farmer uprisings against Monsanto, and the demand for organic is booming so much that the US is now importing more organic food than they are growing."
"It doesn’t mention that Monsanto’s research pipeline is all paid for and that the company has an entire department dedicated to discounting any scientific research which paints them in an unfavorable light. This is obviously not a sustainable way to do business, since even the World Health Organization has called glyphosate ‘probably carcinogenic’ and organizations everywhere are now demanding a ban on glyphosate.
"We can only hope that the Monsanto/Syngenta merger does not happen. It would result in a bloated agricultural chemical giant capable of dominating the seed market at almost three times the rate of its nearest competitor."
Now, little did I think, over a year ago, that the board of
Mon(ster)santo might have been thinking in terms of creating a GMO
cartel and trust, such as I half-humorously suggested when I proposed
that all these purveyors of bad seed - Syncrudda, DuPonzanto,
Mon(ster)santo, BASF (Bloated Assinine Synthetic
Foodlikesubstances...er...Bayrischen Analin und Soda-Fabrik),
et al. - get together and reform IG Farben in the form of a huge
GMO-chemicals cartel, "IG Farbensanto." But clearly the as yet
unsuccessful bid to acquire Syncrudda was, as the article avers, a
significant step towards the cartelization of the GMO seeds market, and
the creation of its own "scientism" department to dispute any competing
or adversarial science questioning the bought and paid for corporate
wisdom of their soundness might be considered to be a step toward a
trust, in this case, an ideas trust.
But as the article avers, there's another flaw in the business
model besides cartelization and trusts, and that is the increasing
market for non-GMO foods and crops in America, such that the USA now has
to import real food, because the cartel has so dominated the domestic market that demand is exceeding supply, and that cannot be good news for Mon(ster)santo, and while it does not appear that Moody's is willing to admit publicly that
it was thinking of these considerations, you can bet your bottom dollar
that in the private discussions not-for-public-consumption, these were
crucial considerations, for no sound business model, much less rating,
can exist without considering market trends and public opinion.And
perhaps, too, Syncrudda was thinking in terms of its own long-term
corporate health.
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