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At Aquinore. UK. Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Thursday, March 7th, and this is your

F-T-News briefing. The head of Bayer says the company's not going to sell new shares anytime soon.

And Ghana could lose critical funding because of a controversial new law.

Plus the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund made billions gobbling up shares of public companies.

Now it wants in on the private ones too.

There's a whole world of private assets out there.

Companies that aren't listed on the stock market,

and that's where private equity plays.

I'm Mark Filipino and here's the news you need to start your day. The Bayer could probably use some medicine for its giant corporate headache right now.

The German drugs and pesticides maker

released ugly quarterly earnings on Tuesday. The same day Bayer said it wouldn't

split itself up and investors punished the company by sending shares down to a 19 year low.

Bayer is also apparently ruling out selling new shares.

CEO Bill Anderson spoke to the FT and said, quote, there is zero chance that's happening.

His key argument is that it would reduce the share value for existing investors.

Now, there isn't a ton of good news happening at Bayer right now.

Its patent for a blockbuster drug is expiring this year,

and it's dealing with expensive lawsuits related to its weed killer roundup which thousands of Americans blame for giving them cancer. Norway's sovereign wealth fund is worth a cool 1.6 trillion dollars and

it's grown to that size through public investments.

It owns a little bit of every single major listed company in the world.

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