Germany's Bayer has appointed the head of U.S. lab equipment maker Thermo Fisher Scientific as chief executive as part of a management overhaul likely to focus it more sharply on healthcare. Dutch-born CEO-designate Marijn Dekkers, will join Bayer's management board at the beginning of next year and take the reins nine months later, Bayer said, setting the stage for Werner Wenning's exit after eight years in the job. Dekkers is also slated to serve as interim head of Bayer's healthcare division, replacing Arthur Higgins, who will leave in the first half of 2010 for personal reasons, the company said. The overhaul, which will also see finance chief Klaus Kuehn take early retirement in April 2010, immediately prompted speculation that the drugs and chemicals firm could launch a strategic revamp to focus on healthcare. Kuehn will be replaced by Werner Baumann, an executive at Bayer's drugs business, where he helped integrate rival Schering, acquired in 2006 for 7 billion euros ($10.24 billion). "(Bayer is) looking to expand in the healthcare space, and it's interesting that both the new CEO and CFO have experience with acquisitions and integration of companies, so the question is: are there plans to go for another takeover at some point," WestLB analyst Cornelia Thomas said. Targets could include assets in emerging markets or selected prescription drug businesses, possibly in oncology, she added. The management changes will make Bayer the eighth German blue-chip company to be led by a foreigner, underlining a growing trend.
Dekkers, who has a doctorate in chemistry, will have to decide whether Bayer is to remain one of the few drugs-chemicals conglomerates left, alongside Solvay and Merck KGaA. "If Bayer is really looking to turn itself into more of a pharmaceutical company or healthcare company as opposed to an industrial company, I think they've appointed the right person to guide them through that transition," said Alex Morozov, an analyst at Morningstar.