The European Commission said Monday that it has approved the acquisition of parts of Bayer AG’s crop-science business by BASF SE.
On April 26, Bayer had said that it had signed an agreement to sell further crop-science businesses to BASF for up to 1.7 billion euros ($2.07 billion) as part of its planned acquisition of Monsanto Co. MON, +0.22%
Although the European Commission said that it “did not identify competition concerns with most parts of the transaction,” it had concerns that the deal would have reduced innovation competition to develop some non-selective herbicides and potential competition to produce nematicidal seed treatments.