Bayer seeks buyer for major assets as company plans 12,000 redundancies

Bayer will lay off 12,000 workers as part of a plan to drag the company’s share price up by its bootstraps.

Management today announced it will lose around 10 per cent of its 118,200 workers worldwide, with a large portion of the redundancies being made in Germany.

It is also looking to sell off its animal health business, sun care brand Coppertone and foot care brand Dr Scholl’s.

The two brands are among the biggest in the Merck & Co healthcare portfolio which Bayer bought for $14bn in 2014.

“This will enable us to focus on our core categories in consumer health,” Bayer Chairman Werner Baumann told reporters on a conference call.

Bayer is also seeking a buyer for its 60 per cent stake in service provider Currenta. It has greatly reduced its reliance on the company’s products since the carve-out of Covestro from Bayer in 2015.

The company is also abandoning a €500m haemophilia research facility in Wuppertal which was announced in 2014.

Stocks were trading down 1.2 per cent to 64.23 this afternoon.

The company will cut around 900 jobs in its pharmaceutical research and development section and 350 in Wuppertal. 1,100 jobs will be lost when it reorganises its consumer health unit, while it will cull 4,100 positions in crop sciences following the integration of of Monsanto, and up to 6,000 elsewhere.

“We are aware of the gravity of these decisions and are grateful for the dedication of our employees all around the world,” Baumann said, promising to treat them “fairly and responsibility throughout the process that’s ahead of us.”