Change of leadership at three Bayer companies

Dr. Jörg Reinhardt has been appointed Chairman of the Board of Management of Bayer HealthCare AG and Chairman of the Executive Committee effective August 15, 2010. The 54-year-old German national was latterly Chief Operating Officer of Novartis AG, Basel, Switzerland. “Dr. Reinhardt is an acknowledged expert with many years of experience in the health care industry,” commented Werner Wenning, Chairman of the Board of Management of Bayer AG. “We are convinced of his ability to provide a decisive impetus to our global HealthCare business and further expand our strong competitive positions.”

The former HealthCare CEO, Arthur J. Higgins, left the company as planned on April 30, 2010 at his own request. “Over the past years, Arthur Higgins has made a decisive contribution to the restructuring and strengthening of Bayer HealthCare and has set new trends,” said Wenning. “We thank him for his great commitment and wish him well for the future.” Dr. Marijn Dekkers, member of the Bayer AG Board of Management and its designated Chairman, has taken over as interim Bayer HealthCare CEO, as previously announced, until Dr. Reinhardt’s appointment takes effect.

The new Chairman of the Board of Management of Bayer CropScience AG will be Sandra E. Peterson (51), a U.S. citizen. She will join the subgroup’s Board of Management on July 1, 2010 and succeed Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Friedrich Berschauer as Chairman effective October 1, 2010. Said Werner Wenning, Chairman of the Bayer AG Board of Management: “Sandra Peterson has been a successful division head in the Bayer Group for the past five years, having previously demonstrated her leadership qualities in various sectors of industry. We are therefore convinced that she has the right profile to successfully lead the CropScience business.” Peterson’s successor as a member of the Bayer HealthCare Executive Committee and Head of the Medical Care Division will be 46-year-old Alan Main, a British citizen, who is currently Head of the Europe Region in Bayer HealthCare’s Consumer Care Division.

Wenning praised the achievements of Berschauer, who will be 60 in June and is taking retirement after 30 years of valuable service to Bayer: “Professor Berschauer has further strengthened the position of Bayer CropScience as an innovation leader in conventional crop protection and driven the expansion of our seed and biotechnology businesses. “We thank him for his great commitment and wish him well for the future.”

In addition, the Supervisory Board of Bayer CropScience appointed Achim Noack (50) to the company’s Board of Management effective June 1, 2010. As of October 1, 2010, Noack will assume responsibility for Industrial Operations & QHSE (Quality, Health, Safety and Environment) in succession to Dr. Wolfgang Welter (62), who will retire on September 30, 2010 after many years of valuable service to this company. Noack will be succeeded as Managing Director of Bayer Technology Services GmbH, effective June 1, 2010, by Dr. Dirk Van Meirvenne (46), currently Head of Production and Technology Isocyanates at Bayer MaterialScience AG.

Future HealthCare CEO Dr. Jörg Reinhardt was born on March 11, 1956 in Homburg in the German state of Saarland. He studied pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Saarbrücken. After obtaining his doctorate in 1981, Reinhardt began his career with Sandoz, a predecessor company of Novartis, in 1982, holding various managerial positions of increasing responsibility in research and development. He was appointed Head of Corporate Development in 1994. After the formation of Novartis in 1996, he served as Head of Preclinical Development and Project Management before being appointed Global Head of Development in 1999. In this capacity he was responsible for clinical, pharmaceutical, chemical and biotechnological product development, drug safety testing and regulatory affairs.

At the end of 2005 he was appointed CEO of the Vaccines & Diagnostics Division, San Francisco/Boston, United States. At the end of 2008, Reinhardt returned to Switzerland to become Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Novartis, a position he held until the end of January 2010. In this capacity Reinhardt was responsible for all four of the group’s divisions as well as for Human Resources, IT, Corporate Affairs and Communications. He was also a member of the company’s Executive Committee.

From 2000 until January 2010, Reinhardt also served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Foundation in La Jolla, California. From 2001 through 2004 he was a member of the Supervisory Board of MorphoSys AG, Germany, which specializes in researching and developing monoclonal antibodies.

A member of the Bayer HealthCare Executive Committee since May 2005, future CropScience CEO Sandra E. Peterson has headed up HealthCare’s Medical Care Division since January 2009. She was previously in charge of the Diabetes Care Division, now one of the businesses of Medical Care.

Peterson, born in 1959 in New York, N.Y., holds a B.A. in Government from Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, and a Master of Public Administration in Applied Economics from the University of Princeton, New Jersey. She received a fellowship from the Robert Bosch Foundation in Stuttgart, Germany, and spent a year in 1984–85 serving with the German Federal Ministry of Finance and the Federation of German Industries.

From 1987–1993, Peterson was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, working on brand marketing strategies, innovative product development and new business. Between 1993 and 1996 she held various global executive positions with home appliances manufacturer Whirlpool Corporation, subsequently being appointed Executive Vice President at foods company Nabisco. In 1999 Peterson became Senior Vice President of Merck-Medco’s Health Businesses, where she launched several new business lines.

Her areas of responsibility at Medco included business development, strategy, cooperation management, product development, branding and marketing As a member of the executive management team, she played a role in the strategic spin-off of Medco Health from Merck & Co., Inc., latterly serving as Group President of Medco Health Solutions, Inc.

Peterson is a member of the Board of Directors of Dunn & Bradstreet. In addition, she is a member and former Chairman of the Board of Wildlife Trust, an international non-profit scientific organization; a member of the Committee of 200, an international organization for women in management positions; and a member of the Women’s Forum.

Future CropScience Board of Management member Achim Noack was born in Hamburg on July 17, 1959. After studying chemical engineering at the University of Dortmund, he joined Bayer AG in 1986 as a process engineer with the former Crop Protection Business Group. After five years he transferred to the engineering unit of the Central Technology Division, moving two years later to Kansas City, Missouri, United States, as project manager for the Crop Protection Business Group.

Noack returned to Germany in 1997 as plant manager for the Organic Chemicals Business Group in Krefeld-Uerdingen. Two years later he was placed in charge of engineering support for agrochemical active ingredients in Germany. In 2000 he was named Head of the Corporate Engineering Department and, shortly thereafter, Chief Technology Officer of Bayer Corporation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. After the establishment of Bayer Technology Services in 2002, he headed the Bayer Technology Services Americas office.

Noack was appointed the company’s Managing Director in mid-2005. In this function Noack pursued a systematic growth strategy, continuing the development of the former Central Technology Division into a flexible, customer-focused service provider.

The future Managing Director of Bayer Technology Services, Dr. Dirk Van Meirvenne, was born on September 19, 1963 in Sint-Niklaas, Belgium. He studied polymer chemistry at the University of Ghent, Belgium. In 1990 he joined Bayer Antwerpen N.V., Belgium, where he worked in titanium dioxide production until 1997, latterly as plant manager. He subsequently transferred to the plastics unit, holding responsibility for polycarbonate production in Antwerp until 2001. Van Meirvenne subsequently served as site manager in Map Ta Phut, Thailand, which at that time was being expanded to become Bayer’s largest production center for polycarbonates in Asia.

Just over a year later he was appointed Head of Global Operations, Polycarbonates at Bayer Polymers in Krefeld-Uerdingen. When Bayer MaterialScience was formed in 2004, he was appointed Global Head of Production and Technology in the Polycarbonates business unit. Since 2007 Van Meirvenne has served as Global Head of Production and Technology, Isocyanates, at Bayer MaterialScience in Leverkusen. In this capacity he was responsible for the construction of the MDI and TDI facilities in Caojing near Shanghai, China.

The future head of Bayer HealthCare’s Medical Care Division, Alan Main, has been Head of the Region Europe in the company’s Consumer Care Division, headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, since February 1, 2008. This Region comprises the western and eastern European countries, the Middle East and Africa. Prior to that, as Head of the Region Asia/Pacific in the Consumer Care Division, he was responsible for Commercial Operations and the development of important growth markets in the Far East. Main is currently a board member and Vice President of the AESGP (Association of the European Self-Medication Industry).

Main was born in 1963 in Aberdeen, Scotland. He obtained a B.A. in International Marketing from Thames Polytechnic. He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketers in the United Kingdom.

Alan Main has more than 25 years of experience in the OTC industry, where he has held various positions in marketing and management. Before entering the consumer care business he worked for Stafford-Miller (now GSK) and Merrell Dow (now Sanofi-Aventis). In 1992 Main began his marketing career with Roche Consumer Health in the United Kingdom, where he held various positions of increasing responsibility in the U.K. and abroad, including South Africa and Hong Kong. He joined Bayer in January 2005 following Bayer’s successful acquisition of the Roche Consumer Health business. Before the acquisition, Main was Head of the Region International, comprising Asia/Pacific, Russia, Turkey, the Middle East and Africa. He was a member of the Leadership Team at Roche Consumer Health.