Incoming Bayer chief executive Bill Anderson says he is keeping an open mind on whether to break up the company into smaller pieces, as some fidgety investors want.
Anderson, who takes over the nearly 160-year-old German drugmaker at the start of June after calls from investors to remove his predecessor, says he will spend the next two months “listening” and sees no consensus on the issue so far.
The 56-year-old chemicals engineer from the U.S., brought over from Swiss rival Roche, begins at a testing time, weighed down by lawsuits claiming Bayer’s weed-killer causes cancer and pressure from investors demanding major change.
Lawsuits have dogged Bayer since it acquired the Roundup weed-killer brand as part of the Monsanto purchase. Anderson said he took the lawsuits “very seriously” but did not spell out a future course of action about them.
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On the stock market Bayer, once the most valuable company on Germany’s DAX blue-chip index, is now worth only about the same as it paid for Monsanto.
