Dr. Marijn E. Dekkers to be new CEO of Bayer from October 1, 2010
Werner Wenning (62), Bayer AG CEO since 2002, is to extend his contract of service by eight months to September 30, 2010, a few weeks before his 64th birthday. In its meeting on Tuesday, Bayer’s Supervisory Board appointed Netherlands-born Dr. Marijn E. Dekkers (51), currently President and CEO of U.S. laboratory equipment manufacturer Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., to succeed Wenning as CEO from October 1, 2010. Dekkers will join the Bayer Management Board on January 1, 2010. In a transition phase he will also serve as CEO of Bayer HealthCare, succeeding Arthur J. Higgins (52) who has decided to leave the company during the first half of 2010 for personal reasons. Higgins was appointed Chairman of the Bayer HealthCare Executive Committee on July 1, 2004, and has been CEO of Bayer HealthCare AG since January 1, 2006.
Dr. Marijn E. Dekkers, designated Chairman of the Board of Management of Bayer AG.
Bayer AG
Following the Annual Stockholders’ Meeting on April 30, 2010, the present CFO Klaus Kühn will take early retirement at the age of 58. The Supervisory Board has appointed Werner Baumann (46), currently a member of both the Board of Management and Executive Committee of Bayer HealthCare, to be Kühn’s successor. Baumann will also join the Bayer Management Board on January 1, 2010.
Arthur J. Higgins is also leaving Bayer at his own request. “Over the past five years, Mr. Higgins has played a key role in realigning and strengthening our health care business. For this he deserves our thanks and appreciation,” said Werner Wenning.
Dr. Marijn E. Dekkers
In Dr. Dekkers, who holds both Dutch and U.S. citizenship, Bayer is gaining as its CEO a highly experienced international manager.
Born on September 22, 1957 in the southern Dutch city of Tilburg, Dekkers studied chemistry at the universities of Nijmegen and Eindhoven on graduating from high school.
Immediately after completing his Ph.D. studies in 1985, the future Bayer CEO moved to the United States to start his career in research at General Electric in Schenectady, New York. Dekkers originally planned this position only as a way station en route to a university professorship. However, he enjoyed working in industry so much that he stayed.
Two years later, he returned to the Netherlands to work at the GE Plastics research facility in Bergen op Zoom. When the post of his former U.S. supervisor became vacant in 1988, he recrossed the Atlantic to head polymer materials research in the United States.
Dr. Dekkers held management positions in various other polymers units at GE before moving to AlliedSignal (subsequently Honeywell International Inc.) in 1995. For four years he subsequently headed this company’s Specialty Films and Fluorine Chemicals business groups based in Morristown, New Jersey, moving in 1999 to head Electronic Materials in San Jose in California’s Silicon Valley. This business group manufactures electronic components, supplying companies such as Intel and Cisco.
In 2000, Marijn Dekkers was offered the position of Chief Operating Officer with Boston-based Thermo Electron Corporation. The offer included the perspective of becoming the company’s CEO at a later date - and thus began a nine-year success story. Within a short time, Dekkers implemented a complete corporate reorganization and, when he became President and CEO as planned in 2002, the company had a workforce of 11,000 with sales of USD 2.2 billion.
In his role as CEO he initiated further extensive restructuring measures, divesting various organizational units and strengthening the company’s core business by means of targeted acquisitions, including the purchase in 2006 of the significantly larger laboratory consumables supplier Fisher Scientific. Dekkers thereby created a company which now employs 35,000 people in six business groups and generates annual sales of USD 10.5 billion.
Two years ago, Marijn Dekkers was also elected to the Board of Directors of Biogen Idec.
Werner Baumann
Future CFO Werner Baumann was born on October 6, 1962 in Krefeld, Germany. After studying economics at Aachen Technical University and Cologne University, he joined Bayer AG at Leverkusen in 1988. His first duties were in the Southwest Europe section of the Corporate Finance Department. In 1991 he transferred to Bayer Hispania Comercial in Barcelona, Spain to take up a position as controller. He became assistant to the managing director there in 1995.
One year later, Baumann moved to Bayer Corporation in Tarrytown, New York, where he was latterly Head of Business Planning & Administration in the Diagnostics Business Group.
Baumann returned to Germany in July 2002 to become a member of the Board of Management of the newly formed subgroup Bayer HealthCare (BHC). He is presently a member of this company’s Executive Committee and Head of Central Administration & Organization. As a member of the management board of Bayer Schering Pharma until 2009, he actively participated in this company’s integration.
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