German drug and crop chemicals maker Bayer is set to win conditional European Union antitrust approval for its $62.5 billion bid for the world’s major seed company, Monsanto, Reuters reports citing its sources. The European Commission is expected to issue a decision on the deal by April 5. Bayer has already pledged to sell certain seed and herbicide assets for €5.9 billion ($7.2 billion) to chemical... 

The picture shows Opel’s production plant in Ruesselsheim, Germany. A new poll shows German firms doing business in Russia are suffering from the Western sanctions against Moscow, with hundreds of the companies suspending or cancelling projects. The survey published on Friday by the German-Russian Chamber of Commerce showed 58 percent of the German firms polled said they had been affected by... 

Blackout Britain – it’s only just the beginning. BASF, the world’s largest chemical company, has been headquartered in Germany since before the country formally existed. Founded in 1865 by the industrial pioneer Friedrich Engelhorn, it still occupies the vast site on the banks of the Rhine at Ludwigshafen where its first dye and soda factories were built. A third of its staff are employed... 

The world’s largest seed corporation says it has dropped its bid to get more genetically modified crops onto the European market due to the wide-spread popular opposition. The biotech giant says it will expand its share of the natural seed market instead. “We will no longer be pursuing approvals for cultivation of new biotech crops in Europe. Instead, we will focus on enabling imports of biotech...