Bayer could finance ‘significant’ acquisition, CFO says

Bayer AG could finance a “significant” acquisition using a combination of debt, equity and its portfolio assets, Chief Financial Officer Werner Baumann said in an interview today.

The German drug and chemical maker would only sell one of its three units “on the merits of its own strategic assessment,” not to finance a deal, Baumann said. “You will not find us in a situation where we say we want to buy this, therefore we have to sell that. We always look at the intrinsic appeal of a business inside of its industry.”

Baumann declined to comment on the animal-health unit that Pfizer Inc. plans to divest. Bayer doesn’t have a goal in terms of the size of acquisitions it hopes to do, he said.