Syngenta Plans $2 Billion Stock Buy-Back to Shore Up Failing Investor Support

Swiss biotech company Syngenta is trying to appease wary investors with a scheme to buy back more than $2 billion in stock shares, and sell a vegetable seed portion of their overall business.

In order to keep investors interested in the chemical companies wares, Syngenta plans to ‘return significant levels of investment capital’ according to Bloomberg. Syngenta stock fell significantly after the merger (attempted hostile takeover) with Monsanto failed.

“The last few months really focused our minds on just how little the appreciation of the inherent worth of seeds assets was,” said Chief Financial Officer John Ramsay. But a more accurate statement would be that the interest in GM seeds is waning.

Though Syngenta’s vegetable seed business made them over $663 million last year, this is small potatoes compared to its chemical sales. The entire list of insecticides that Syngenta sells is available here.

Among them are the controversial bee-killing class of insecticides called neonicotinoids. They are also actively involved in introducing many first-generation genetically modified crops, as well as being implicated in the failed ‘Golden Rice’ experiment that tried to push vitamin A-enhanced GM rice on poverty-stricken countries.

As more petitions urge the public to divest from biotech companies who are poisoning our food supply, they likely will have to come up with more creative ways to draw investors to their neonic’d honey.