Executive at Rival Company Buys Deere Shares

The top executive of Agco Corp. said he bought 5,000 shares of rival Deere & Co. last week because he believes the sell-off in farm equipment shares belies the industry's strong fundamentals.

In an interview with Reuters following the company's release of third-quarter earnings, Martin Richenhagen, Agco's chairman, president and CEO, said, at the time of the purchase, he was restricted from buying his own company's shares.

"I couldn't buy Agco, so I bought some Deere," he told Reuters.

Richenhagen believes global farm fundamentals were unchanged by the recent turmoil in financial markets, which has pulled the price of a number of key commodities, including corn, soybeans and wheat, sharply lower.

He said the correction brought crop prices back to more normal, less speculative levels and forecast a corresponding drop in oil prices would reduce the price of many farm inputs, such as fertilizer. He said he was "pretty optimistic" farmer income would "stay above average' in 2009.