FRANKFURT, Jan 28 (Reuters) – Bayer (BAYGn.DE) investor Deka has known as for CEO Werner Baumann to get replaced forward of his scheduled departure, including to mounting strain on the German drugmaker.
“Bayer wants a brand new strategic positioning, which can’t be credibly completed beneath Werner Baumann,” Ingo Speich, head of sustainability and company governance at Deka, informed the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS) newspaper in remarks revealed on Saturday.
The mutual funds agency is amongst Bayer’s 20 largest shareholders.
“There’s a window of alternative for Chairman Norbert Winkeljohann to behave earlier than the annual basic assembly on the finish of April. He has to grab that chance, in any other case the strain on him will improve as effectively,” Speich added.
He stated a successor must come from exterior the corporate.
“Usually talking we’re all the time open to a constructive dialogue with our stakeholders,” a Bayer spokesperson stated, declining to remark particularly on the interview.
Regardless of current enhancements within the firm’s agriculture enterprise and drug growth prospects, Bayer shares have been weighed down by litigation over glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup and over environmental air pollution associated to chemical compounds referred to as PCBs.
The authorized claims are legacy points from its takeover of Monsanto for greater than $60 billion in 2018.
Baumann, who engineered the troubled Monsanto deal, was given a brand new contract in 2020 that runs till 2024 and stated on the time he would depart the corporate when that time period expires.
Every week in the past mutual funds group Union Funding criticised Bayer’s chair for a scarcity of engagement, equivalent to exploring a spin-off of the corporate’s client well being division.
Bayer can be dealing with calls for from activist investor Bluebell Capital Companions to interrupt up the corporate, together with promoting off its client well being unit and later a separation of its prescribed drugs and agricultural companies.
One other activist funding fund, hedge fund veteran Jeffrey Ubben’s Inclusive Capital Companions, stated this month it had additionally acquired a stake in Bayer.
Reporting by Ludwig Burger; enhancing by Jason Neely
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