Bayer to Face EU Objections to Monsanto Deal in Coming Days

Bayer AG is set to get a so-called statement of objections cataloging potential reasons for the European Union’s antitrust regulator to block its proposed $66 billion takeover of Monsanto Co. as soon as next week, according to two people familiar with the probe.

A precise list of objections may aid the companies by laying out regulators’ concerns that they can address with a package of concessions, said the people on condition of anonymity. Bayer and Monsanto officials met with the EU on Tuesday and are in regular contact to thrash out issues, one of the people said.

Regulators are looking “very carefully” at the competition issues in the combination of Bayer and Monsanto to make sure farmers still have choice and “affordable prices, both when it comes to seeds and pesticides,” EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said last week. DuPont Co. had to sell most of its global research and development operations to placate EU concerns over its merger with Dow Chemical Co. earlier this year.

“What this may do is push the close back to the middle of the year,” Seth Goldstein, an analyst at Morningstar Inc. in Chicago said in a telephone interview Friday. Bayer said in October it’s aiming to complete the merger by early 2018.

The European Commission and Bayer representatives declined to comment. A Monsanto spokeswoman declined to comment on the EU and the merger.

Concessions on research and development may also be on the table for Bayer, Werner Baumann, the company’s chief executive officer, said last week. Bayer is already selling a seed-and-agrochemical business to BASF SE for $7 billion and is preparing a package of additional vegetable-seed product lines to win over regulators, people said last month.