Monsanto to Sell Cotton Seed Business

Monsanto Co. said it had agreed to sell for an undisclosed amount of cash its cotton seed business to the Dallas-based buyout firm Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst Inc., a move that may clear the way for Monsanto to complete its long-pending acquisition of cotton seed breeder Delta & Pine Land Co. In May, a year after St. Louis-based Monsanto and Delta & Pine agreed to merge, Delta’s directors voted to extend the time frame for completing the deal to Dec. 31, 1999, as federal regulators had yet to approve the transaction. Shares of Delta jumped $2.63 to close at $31.75, while Monsanto’s stock fell 63 cents to $39.38, both on the New York Stock Exchange. A spokeswoman for Scott, Miss.-based Delta said the deal to sell Stoneville Pedigreed Seed Co. was a key step toward closing its transaction with Monsanto, but she declined to comment on when the acquisition might be completed.

Separately, Monsanto may spin off its Searle pharmaceutical business to help boost the value of its stock, Dan Dorfman reported in his column on JagNotes.com, citing an unnamed person. Searle could fetch at least $50 a share in a sale, more than Monsanto’s current stock price, Dorfman said. Monsanto Chief Executive Robert Shapiro told the Bloomberg Forum last month that, “We have no intention whatsoever of spinning off Searle.”