Bayer's chief executive reaffirmed his plan to acquire companies to strengthen the German group's healthcare division, he was quoted as saying in a newspaper interview.

"It is one of our priorities to build out our healthcare business. That includes external growth," Werner Wenning, who will be replaced by Marijn Dekkers in October, told Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

Even deals worth billions of euros, on the scale of the 2006 takeover of rival Schering, could be financed, he was quoted as saying. He also said the economic crisis, which affected Bayer's plastics and chemicals unit in particular, would not be over unless the North American market recovered.

There were some positive signals, he added.