Bayer (OTCPK:BAYRY) says Chairman Werner Wenning will step down at the end of this year’s annual shareholders meeting in late April, citing progress in settlement talks regarding claims its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer.
He will be succeeded by Norbert Winkeljohann, who was head of PricewaterhouseCoopers Europe until June 2018 and has been a member of Bayer’s supervisory board since 2018.
Wenning, whose term as chairman of Bayer’s non-executive supervisory board would have expired in 2022, said he had planned to depart last year after reaching the board’s recommended age limit of 72 but was asked to stay on given “the company’s situation at the time.”
Bayer inherited the Roundup legal battle when it bought Monsanto in a $63B deal that Wenning backed and even helped negotiate together with former CEO Werner Baumann.