LONDON/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - The slump in Bayer 's share price in recent months could soon lead to the company being relegated from the Stoxx Europe 50. According to the fast-exit rule, a company is removed from the 50-stock, mixed-currency European index as soon as it is ranked 75th or lower in the list for two consecutive months, as analyst Pankaj Gupta of JPMorgan bank explained on Thursday. In the list from the beginning of February, Bayer was ranked 79th and based on the current price, nothing has changed.

The index provider Stoxx will publish the next list at the beginning of March. Should Bayer be relegated, this would be implemented on March 7, according to the analyst. Potential successors are the Spanish bank BBVA and the Italian bank Unicredit.

After months of decline, Bayer shares are currently trading at around 28 euros, their lowest level since 2005. On the stock market, the company has a market capitalization of only 27.6 billion euros. This is roughly half as much as the Group paid for the takeover of US agricultural chemicals giant Monsanto in 2018.

With the acquisition, the Leverkusen-based company under its former CEO Werner Baumann also brought the US legal disputes surrounding the alleged cancer risks of weed killers containing glyphosate into the company. These have already cost many billions and there is no end in sight. In addition, at the end of 2023, a pharmaceutical study flopped with a promising drug that was supposed to compensate for the loss of sales caused by the gradual expiry of patents for current bestsellers.

Index changes are particularly important for funds that replicate indices in real terms, such as physically replicating ETFs. They then have to be rebalanced accordingly, which can have a short-term impact on share prices./mis/la/jha/