German pharma and chemical giant Bayer agreed to buy US biotech seed developer Monsanto for a whopping $66 billion, the companies announced September 14. The deal marks the third high-profile consolidation in the agbiotech industry in the last year. It follows a proposed merger between Midland, Michigan–based Dow Chemical and Wilmington, Delaware–based DuPont worth a combined $130 billion, and a $43-billion acquisition of Syngenta by China National Chemical, a state-run chemical giant in Beijing. All three deals face antitrust reviews in multiple countries. Regulators will assess whether the consolidations will unfairly lead to higher prices for farmers and consumers, and any chilling effects on innovation. In the Bayer–Monsanto deal, the companies aim to pair Leverkusen-based Bayer's crop protection business with St. Louis–based Monsanto's seeds and traits portfolio. Bayer is best known, however, as the maker of aspirin, Alka Seltzer and other healthcare products—a business that represented 67% of the company's sales in 2015. Consuming Monsanto will reshape Bayer's focus, putting crop science on an equal footing with healthcare in terms of projected sales, according to the company. That might pull resources away from Bayer's pharmaceutical research pipeline, weakening its capacity to grow in that sector, analysts say. Bayer's offer represents a 44% premium to Monsanto's share price before takeover talk was first reported in May, and is the largest acquisition of 2016 in any sector. Bayer said it would pay Monsanto $2 billion if the deal falls apart on antitrust grounds.