
AI-Powered Knowledge Transfer in Manufacturing
Artificial intelligence (AI) can help companies in the process industry capture, retain and access valuable historical expertise and ease the transition for new colleagues in the plant.
Artificial intelligence (AI) can help companies in the process industry capture, retain and access valuable historical expertise and ease the transition for new colleagues in the plant.
Iktos, a French company specialized in artificial intelligence (AI) for new drug design, and Bayer’s Crop Science division announced a collaboration to expand the use of AI in the discovery and development of new sustainable crop protection products.
Fluor Corporation announced today that it has completed construction of Bayer’s first global Cell Therapy Launch Facility in Berkeley, California. Completion was celebrated on October 10, 2023, at the new facility with local officials, dignitaries, Bayer employees, and clients.
Bayer has opened a new cell therapy production plant in Berkeley, California, USA, for the production of of BlueRock Therapeutics’ bemdaneprocel (BRT-DA01), an investigational cell therapy currently in evaluation for treating Parkinson’s disease. BlueRock Therapeutics is a clinical-stage cell therapy company and a wholly owned, independently managed subsidiary of Bayer.
Bayer’ Crop Science division plans to invest €220 million in a new research and development (R&D) facility at its Monheim, Germany site. This is the company’s largest single investment in its crop protection business in Germany since the founding of the Monheim campus in 1979, Bayer said.
Bayer adjusted its full-year outlook for 2023 downward, mainly due to a significant further decline in sales of glyphosate-based products. The group has thus joined the ranks of chemical companies that have cut their annual targets in recent days and weeks.
Two former spinoffs from Bayer were competing for headlines on Jun. 19 and 20, as specialty chemicals company Lanxess issued a profit warning amid rumors that Middle East chemicals and energy behemoth Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) had made a takeover offer for engineering plastics producer Covestro.
Bayer and UK biotech Bicycle Therapeutics have agreed to collaborate to develop and commercialize the latter’s radioconjugates for multiple oncology targets.
Bayer has seen its share of turbulent shareholder meetings, and the event on Apr. 28 is likely to continue in that vein, though it would be tough to top 2019. In that year, when anger over lawsuits involving Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide boiled over, 55% voted not to discharge CEO Werner Baumann and the managing board of their responsibilities.
A move by US drugmaker Merck & Co. to have Bayer assume all liability for lawsuits alleging that the talc-based Dr. Scholl's foot powder causes cancer has failed, at least in the first instance.
Ahead of a change in leadership at the top after the upcoming annual general meeting, in interviews with news agencies Bayer is dropping hints in dribbles about future plans for its healthcare business.
Bayer is looking to spend $1 billion on drug research and development in the United States during 2023 as part of a plan to double its sales in the country by the end of the decade.
At his last – virtual – annual results press conference before handing over the CEO’s job to Bill Anderson in May, in addition to reviewing figures for 2022 and trying to assess the still clouded look for 2023, outgoing Bayer chief Werner Baumann took the opportunity to criticize the US legal system.
Bowing to growing pressure from activist investors with different missions, the supervisory board of tradition-steeped German pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals player Bayer has announced the appointment of a new CEO to succeed embattled incumbent Werner Baumann — a year before the end of the current chief executive’s regular term.
Bayer is increasingly shifting the commercial focus of its pharmaceutical business away from Europe and toward the US and China, Stefan Oelrich, head of the German group’s pharmaceuticals arm, said in an interview with Financial Times during the JPMorgan Healthcare conference in San Francisco.
As Bayer’s board prepares to search for a new CEO to succeed Werner Baumann, the German pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals group has attracted the attention of two activist investors interested in pulling its share price out of the doldrums and reaping the rewards.
A French farmer who said he suffered neurological problems including memory loss, fainting and headaches after inhaling fumes from Bayer’s Lasso-branded herbicide in an agricultural accident, has won compensation of €11,135, ending more than 15 years of litigation.
CEO Werner Baumann may be headed for an early exit from Bayer, Bloomberg reports.
Ineos Phenol is paying $330 million to acquire Mitsui Phenols Singapore. With the deal, expected to close in the first quarter of 2023, subject to regulatory approval, it will add 1 million tonnes of annual capacity to its production volume. The business had sales of $750 million in 2021 and 120 employees, all of whom will transfer to the new owner.
Under the name ForGround, Bayer is rolling out a US digital farming platform designed to help US growers use environmentally friendly practices and connect them with companies seeking more sustainable food, feed and biofuel ingredients.
Germany’s Bayer has hired US lobby firm Williams & Jensen to aid its campaign for continued access to contraceptives.
After months of anticipation, the US Supreme Court has deflated Bayer’s hopes that the court’s conservative majority would vote to hear its appeal to overturn a $25 million appeals court verdict in favor of Edwin Hardeman.
Bayer has won its fourth consecutive appeal of a US court case previously decided in favor of a plaintiff who claimed that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide caused his non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Despite the expectations of many, given the broad coverage in media of all types – and the case’s mention on the docket for Jun. 13 – the US Supreme Court has remained silent on whether or not it will hear Bayer’s petition on packaging labels for Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide.
Bayer is stepping away from the $670 million CAR-T worldwide license agreement it entered with Atara Biotherapeutics in 2020.
Bayer’s advice to shareholders expressing concern about the development of the company’s stock at its early May annual general meeting, to bide their time and wait for the US Supreme Court to deal with the issue of warning labels for agrochemicals packaging, seems to have been too hasty.
Like those of other chemical industry players, shareholders attending Bayer’s virtual annual general meeting on Apr. 29 had a full agenda to deal with, though their list was undoubtedly one of the longest. Along with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they discussed potential plans to split pharma and crop science, the timetable for finally ending Roundup litigation and the size of executives’ bonuses.
Bayer CEO Werner Baumann will receive some needed support from two major shareholder groups at the upcoming annual general meeting (AGM) but he is not out of the woods yet.
Bayer has settled a collection of claims from US plaintiffs that Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide caused their cancer, the US newspaper St. Louis Dispatch reports. This, it said, avoids a publicity-sensitive trial that was due to start this week in the Missouri city that was Monsanto’s global headquarters before it was acquired by the German group for $63 billion in 2018.
Bayer CEO Werner Baumann will face a fresh leadership challenge at the company’s annual general meeting scheduled for Apr. 29. Singapore-based Temasek Holdings, which is said to have helped the German group stem its $63 billion purchase of Monsanto in 2018, has soured on the costly and still controversial acquisition and sees Baumann as having bungled it.
Private equity investor Cinven is poised to acquire Bayer’s Environmental Science Professional (ESP) unit, Bloomberg has reported. The news agency’s sources said the buyer of the business put up for sale a year ago was expected to be announced in the early part of March this year.
The agrochemicals market has seen intermittent supply shortages for key herbicide ingredients for several months, and a herbicide shortfall had been predicted for the current crop growing season. With glitches following glitches, reports of a worsening market accelerated at the end of last week, when Bayer CropScience declared force majeure for glyphosate and glyphosate-based products.
The pharma industry’s poaching season is on, though some say it’s never off, just taking a break. In the latest drugmaker-to-drugmaker side-swap, among the top news this week was that Bayer has hired away GlaxoSmithKline’s head of oncology therapy, Christine Roth, just as the UK pharma was seen to be reestablishing its position in cancer therapeutics.
Bayer will potentially pump well over $1 billion into another major gene therapy collaboration, this time with Brisbane, California-based Mammoth BioSciences. In the pact announced during the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, held virtually for the second consecutive year, the German pharma and agriculture group said it aims to tap the US company’s knowhow in CRISPR systems to develop in vivo gene-editing therapies.
In a departure from the accustomed geographical pattern of litigation against Bayer, investors based in Germany are suing the company for €2.2 billion ($2.5 billion). The shareholders are unhappy about the decline in the company’s share price on the back of hefty damage awards to US plaintiffs claiming that Monsanto’s non-selective herbicide Roundup caused their non-Hodgkin lymphoma.