Doubt they even blinked, these companies hire people to calculate risk and so they can continue to get away with it. Just a cost of business. Bayer's gross revenue for just 2022 was 53.4B. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/BAYRY/bayer/revenu...
Maybe 332M was a lot when you were a child. Thanks to compounding monetary inflation year after year, 332M is actually not much any more. It's enough though to make normal people believe that some kind of justice has been served.
No, it's a big amount of money, particularly if it happens repeatedly. Governments have responded to companies' practice of just breaking laws and taking the hit, by continuing to push fines up to they point that they really do hurt and drive down the share price, which directly hurts the wealth of the senior executives and directors.
Bayer's share price is 70% down off its 2015 peak and 65% off its peak since the Monsanto acquisition bid was launched, and has even dropped 30% in just the past 6-7 months. These fines and judgements, and the worry that they may keep happening into the future, are definitely damaging the company.
Monsanto before it was brought by Bayer won all cases.
The moment they where bought by Bayer (i.e. no longer US owned) somehow they start losing cases and judges doing fun things like making ruling based on not peer reviewed not yet fully published studies....
It's better to engage in good faith rather than come out of the gate swinging like that, because otherwise it just sets a mood for inflammatory responses.
Bayer's EBITDA is $12.74B for the trailing 12 months, so they can afford this payout. That said, a number that large is only going to end up getting appealed, there's no way they're just going to sign that cheque.
Thank you for pointing that out. So profit their 2022 32.523B [1]. 32.5 billion in profit dwarfs a 332 million settlement. You have made my point only stronger.
Net profit (or alternatively, free cash flow or operating income) is a far better measure than gross profit for determining whether a company can sustain a particular financial hit.
Their revenue minus expenses is usually low single digit billions, and they had a $12B loss in 2020.
They are earning less than $5B per year for many, many years, and already have a $12B loss to deal with from a couple years ago, there is no way to conclude that a multi billion dollar penalty is a “cost of doing business”.
This is also evident in their market cap graph, showing Bayer’s owners have lost a ton of money over the past 10+ years, especially considering the rocketship a risk less broad market index fund was during the same period.
