Bayer to cut 4,500 jobs in global overhaul

Bayer plans to spend €1 billion on a restructuring plan that will cut 4,500 jobs--but create 2,500 new ones, largely in up-and-coming countries.

It's another big shift to emerging markets for Big Pharma. Bayer plans to spend €1 billion on a restructuring plan that will cut 4,500 jobs--but create 2,500 new ones, largely in up-and-coming countries. The company expects to reap €800 million in annual cost savings from the plan beginning in 2013.

The overhaul offers one answer to questions about what Bayer's new CEO, Marijn Dekkers (photo), would do now that he's in charge. As the company points out in its statement about the revamp plan, Bayer faces the same challenges that beset the rest of the drugmaking world: generic competition, increasingly costly R&D, and pricing pressures from cash-strapped governments. "To finance the expansion of our growth activities," Dekkers says in the statement, "we therefore need to redirect resources, improve efficiencies and cut costs."

Here's the story on the layoffs themselves. Bayer plans to cut 2,000 people from its global workforce, currently at 108,700. About 4,500 job