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.
CEO Werner Baumann may be headed for an early exit from Bayer, Bloomberg reports.
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 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.
Bayer has set aside €480 million to defend lawsuits brought by people who claim that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup caused their non-Hodgkins lymphoma, CEO Werner Baumann said at the company’s annual general meeting on Apr. 28.
