Bayer signs agreement on management job cuts with labour reps

By Ludwig Burger

FRANKFURT (Reuters) -Embattled drugmaker Bayer said it had agreed with shop stewards a significant reduction in managerial jobs and extended a pact that rules out compulsory redundancies in Germany until the end of 2026.

“Bayer is currently in a difficult situation for various reasons. In order to make rapid, sustainable improvements to our operational performance and our room to manoeuvre, far-reaching measures are necessary," executive board member Heike Prinz said in a statement on Wednesday.

The management job cuts would be implemented swiftly over the coming months and completed by the end of 2025 at the latest, the company added.

Numbers could not be provided because the cut-backs were being organized largely in a decentralized fashion, it said.

Bayer said it has 22,200 staff in Germany, out of about 101,000 globally.

New Bayer CEO Bill Anderson said in November he is weighing options to break apart the maker of prescription drugs, consumer health products, crop chemicals and seeds, in a bid to revive a battered share price.

He also said at the time he would seek to simplify decision-making and to cut a significant number of management positions, confirming an earlier Reuters report.

The diversified group is weighed down by the risk of further costly U.S. litigation over an alleged cancer causing effect of its best-selling weedkiller Roundup, and by a weak agriculture business.

In a further blow, Bayer in November stopped a major trial testing a new anti-blood-clotting drug due to lack of efficacy, throwing its most promising development project in grave doubt.

(Reporting by Ludwig BurgerEditing by Chris Reese and Toby Chopra)