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BERLIN — German chemical and pharmaceutical company Bayer AG announced Tuesday that it has tapped Marijn Dekkers to take over as its chief executive in October 2010.
Dekkers, who has both Dutch and U.S. citizenship, is currently the head of Waltham, Massachussets-based laboratory equipment maker Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. Bayer's supervisory board appointed the 51-year-old to replace current CEO Werner Wenning on Oct. 1 next year, the company said.
Wenning, who extended his contract by eight months until the end of next September, will step down shortly before his 64th birthday.
The company said Dekkers will join its management board at the beginning of 2010. It said that in a transitional phase he also will be the chief executive of its Bayer HealthCare unit — succeeding Arthur Higgins, who is leaving the company during the first half of 2010 "for personal reasons."
Bayer is based in the western German city of Leverkusen, and its products include Aspirin and the birth control pill Yasmin. The company had a net profit for the April-June period of euro532 million ($774.65 million) on sales of euro8 billion.
Bayer shares were down half a percent Tuesday, trading at euro46.14 ($67.18) in Frankfurt.
