Leverkusen, Germany - Bayer HealthCare announces that CEO Arthur Higgins will leave the company and Marijn Dekkers is an interim CEO as of May 1.
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Dr. Reinhardt has been appointed CEO of Bayer HealthCare AG and Chairman of the Bayer HealthCare Executive Committee effective August 15, 2010.
He was latterly Chief Operating Officer of Novartis AG, Basel, Switzerland.
Dr. Reinhardt studied pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Saarbrücken.
After obtaining his doctorate in 1981, he started his career with Sandoz, a predecessor company of Novartis, in 1982, holding various managerial positions of increasing responsibility in research an
d development.
He was appointed Head of Corporate Development in 1994.
After the formation of Novartis in 1996, he served as Head of Preclinical Development and Project Management before being appointed Global Head of Development in 1999.
In this capacity he was responsible for clinical, pharmaceutical, chemical and biotechnological development, drug safety testing and regulatory affairs.
At the end of 2005 he was appointed CEO of the Vaccines & Diagnostics Division, San Francisco/Boston, United States.
At the end of 2008, Dr. Reinhardt returned to Switzerland to become Chief Operating Officer of Novartis, a position he held until the end of January 2010.
In this capacity he was responsible for all four of the group’s divisions as well as for Human Resources, IT, Corporate Affairs and Communications. He was also a member of the company’s Executive Committee.
From 2000 until January 2010, Dr. Reinhardt also served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Foundation in La Jolla, California.
From 2001 through 2004 he was a member of the Supervisory Board of MorphoSys AG, Germany, which specializes in researching and developing monoclonal antibodies.
Mr. Higgins studied at Scotland's Strathclyde University from 1974 to 1978, where he gained a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry.
He began his career in 1978 with Bristol-Myers in the U.K.
After working for Sandoz (1979 to 1984) and Fisons (1984 to 1987), he moved to Abbott Laboratories in the United States (1987 to 2001), where he held positions of increasing responsibility in the international and domestic divisions.
In 2001, he was appointed Chairman and CEO of Enzon Pharmaceuticals, headquartered in Bridgewater, New Jersey.
Mr. Higgins has headed up Bayer HealthCare since July 1, 2004. ■