Bayer’s latest round of layoffs has hit Basel, Switzerland, home of the international headquarters of the company's consumer health division.
The conglomerate is cutting around 150 jobs at its consumer health international HQ in Basel, local newspaper the NZZ first reported. The layoffs within the company’s 1000-strong Basel workforce will mostly affect the consumer health division and the administrative functions that support it, a Bayer spokesperson confirmed over email. While the layoffs should take effect by 2025, the company also plans to create some 40 new jobs in Basel.
The job cuts are the latest that have come with Bayer’s massive reorganization under CEO Bill Anderson, who looks to reduce levels of bureaucracy and streamline operations with a program called “dynamic shared ownership.” As of earlier this month, the company was down 3,200 jobs since the start of the year, Bayer reported.
Bayer is cutting jobs “everywhere in the world,” Anderson said on a May investor call, adding that “there’s not a country that we operate in […] where we don’t have a better chance to meet our customers’ needs faster.”
The layoffs, which are to continue through 2025, should save Bayer 500 million euros ($541 million) this year and 2 billion euros ($2.16 billion) in 2026, the company has said. Headcount reductions in the pharma commercialization unit, however, are expected to wrap up at the beginning of the fourth quarter, head of global commercialization at Bayer’s pharma division, Christine Roth, said in a recent Fierce interview.
Earlier this week, the German company’s agricultural division moved to sell a portion of its Creve Coeur, Missouri, campus, namely “areas and facilities that are underutilized or not in use,” Brian Naber, president of Bayer crop science North America, Australia and New Zealand, said in a press release. At the same time, the company announced $100 million in planned investments in its St. Louis-area operations.