Swiss agricultural chemicals group Syngenta AG plans to purchase back more than $2 billion worth of stock to boost shareholder returns after rejecting a takeover approach from Monsanto Co, selling its vegetable seeds business to fund the measure.The world's largest pesticides company is under pressure to offer tangible rewards to shareholders after it turned its back last week on a cash-and-shares bid from unwanted U.S. suitor Monsanto worth $47 billion at the time.The Swiss group will part with the most profitable of its seeds businesses, which has gross profit margins of well above 60 percent compared with about 45 percent for all seeds last year, complicating its efforts to widen group margins. However, finance chief John Ramsay said a sale was the best way to exploit the strength of that business.
Syngenta AG (Syngenta) is an agribusiness operating in the crop protection, seeds and lawn and garden markets. Shares of SYT fell by 1.38% or $-0.95/share to $67.68. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $58.72 and as high as $98.15. On average, 500947 shares of SYT exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 435992.
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