LEVERKUSEN (dpa-AFX) - There will be no quick fixes under him: Bayer CEO-designate Bill Anderson wants to take time to understand the pharmaceutical and chemical group. In the 60 days until he takes office as the company's new leader, he wants to travel a lot and talk to employees. The manager announced this to journalists in Leverkusen on Tuesday evening.

It is his second full day of work at Group headquarters; he has been a member of the Board of Management since the beginning of April, his induction is underway, and he will take the helm at the beginning of June. He did not say exactly when he would present plans for Bayer's future. Much depends on whether a strategic, i.e. large-scale, change is needed. A split - as demanded by some investors - is not likely to happen any time soon under Anderson.

"The question about the group structure is simply asked because it's about something big, something tangible." There are many investors, he said, and some are calling for a split, while others want something different. "Some of the most dynamic and successful companies in the world are broad-based with their products." There is simply no "direct correlation between a diverse product offering for different markets and a company's performance," he said.

What Anderson does give attendees ahead of time is his view of how a company - of any size - should operate. He wants to create a "sense of ownership." Employees should feel responsible and have the will to think and move things forward as if it were their company. Establishing such a corporate culture, however, is a huge undertaking, he says. He himself has already experienced this.

The soon-to-be Bayer CEO also calls for a "strong mission focus," meaning full concentration on the essential tasks. "How do we make sure we only do what we need to do to achieve the goals." In doing so, he said, employees need to be motivated, to feel connected to their jobs. That happens too rarely in some large companies, he says. Anderson can't help but take a dig at the meeting culture, which presumably determines a good part of everyday life in more than a few companies.

Anderson, who is in his mid-fifties, studied chemical engineering and is a proven pharmaceutical expert with many years of experience at Biogen, Genentech and Roche, among others. At the U.S. biotech company Genentech, he says, he eliminated fixed budgets in certain areas that unnecessarily tied up employees. Productivity had increased, but costs had not. Genentech has been part of Roche since 2009.

The Swiss pharmaceutical company was also the US American's last employer before Bayer. At the competitor, the manager was responsible for the pharmaceuticals business. When he was not considered for the position of Group CEO, he left. That was only a few months ago, possibly a stroke of luck for Bayer. The company had initiated the search for a successor to long-time chief Werner Baumann a while ago.

With Anderson, Bayer is also likely to accommodate investors who wanted to draw a line under the Monsanto era in terms of personnel, analyst Emily Field of Barclays Bank recently explained. Baumann had engineered the more than $60 billion acquisition of the U.S. agricultural chemicals group, which was completed in 2018. In addition to successful products, however, the Leverkusen-based company was also involved in extensive U.S. disputes concerning the alleged cancer risks of weed killers containing glyphosate and the long-term effects of PCBs, a chemical that has been banned for decades. In total, this has cost billions, especially the glyphosate case.

Most of the glyphosate cases have now been settled, and Bayer has recently been successful in court. The remaining risks seem manageable, but they are still hanging over Bayer. Anderson was unable and unwilling to comment on this issue so soon after joining the Board of Management.

But he was probably not brought to Leverkusen to work through these problems. Instead, he is expected to bring fresh perspectives on day-to-day business. At Roche, he successfully drove the renewal of the pharmaceutical portfolio in recent years. Although there were some setbacks in 2022, his bottom line is positive. Numerous drugs reached market maturity under his leadership, and the Swiss pharmaceutical company's pipeline is full to bursting with drug candidates.

Bayer's Pharmaceuticals Division has also made great progress under its head Stefan Oelrich in the past two or three years. The sales gap that the gradual loss of patents for the blockbusters Xareto and Eylea will open up in the coming years has lost its horror to a large extent.

As recently as January, Oelrich had raised forecasts for new growth drivers to annual peak sales of more than twelve billion euros. However, it will still be a few years before that happens: Two of the drugs - the novel anticoagulant Asundexian and the active ingredient Elinzanetant for menopausal symptoms - have not yet been approved. Meanwhile, business with the prostate cancer drug Nubeqa and the drug Kerendia for kidney patients with diabetes has got off to a good start.

In any case, much is riding on Asundexian, for which pivotal Phase III trials have recently been initiated. It will be some time before the results are available, and even longer before regulatory approvals are granted. Unlike its predecessor Xarelto, Bayer intends to sell Asundexian itself in the important U.S. market if it is successful. To do this, however, a powerful sales force must first be established, and this will initially be an expensive undertaking. Certainly, Anderson's deep knowledge of the U.S. market will not hurt here either./mis/tav/jha/

--- By Michael Schilling, dpa-AFX ---