Operations
To separate operational and strategic managements, Bayer AG was reorganized into a holding company in December 2003. The group's core businesses were transformed into limited companies, each controlled by Bayer AG. These companies are: Bayer CropScience AG; Bayer HealthCare AG; Bayer MaterialScience AG and Bayer Chemicals AG, and the three service limited companies Bayer Technology Services GmbH, Bayer Business Services GmbH and Bayer Industry Services GmbH & Co. OHG. Bayer AG shares are listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, the London Stock Exchange and previously on the New York Stock Exchange.
Following the reorganization, its chemicals activities (with the exception of H.C. Starck and Wolff Walsrode) were combined with certain components of the polymers segment to form the new company Lanxess on 1 July 2004. Lanxess was listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in early 2005. Bayer HealthCare's Diagnostics Division was acquired by Siemens Medical Solutions in January 2007.
In 2004, Bayer HealthCare AG acquired the over-the-counter (OTC) Pharmaceutical Division of Roche Pharmaceuticals.
On 13 March 2006, Merck KGaA announced a €14.6bn bid for Schering AG. Merck's takeover bid was surpassed by Bayer's $19.5bn bid on 23 March 2006.
On 11 March 2008, Bayer HealthCare announced an agreement to acquire the portfolio and OTC division of privately owned Sagmel, Inc., a US-based company that markets OTC medications in most of the Commonwealth of Independent States countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and others.
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Famous quotes containing the word operations:
“Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“It may seem strange that any road through such a wilderness should be passable, even in winter, when the snow is three or four feet deep, but at that season, wherever lumbering operations are actively carried on, teams are continually passing on the single track, and it becomes as smooth almost as a railway.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“You can’t have operations without screams. Pain and the knife—they’re inseparable.”
—Jean Scott Rogers. Robert Day. Mr. Blount (Frank Pettingell)