Strategy

Living innovation, sustainability and values throughout the Group

Since 2004, our Mission Statement “Bayer: Science For A Better Life” has described our perspectives for the future, our strategy and our values. The values and leadership principles formulated in this Mission Statement serve as a basis for the day-to-day activities of our employees. Through dialogue with them and our external stakeholders, we aim to improve our sustainability management and align it to current challenges.

The values established in our Mission Statement include a will to succeed; a passion for our stakeholders; integrity, openness and honesty; respect for people and nature; and the sustainability of our actions. As a guideline for our corporate strategy, the Mission Statement shows our stockholders, customers and the public what they can – and should – expect from Bayer.

We have communicated to our new employees at Bayer Schering Pharma, Berlin, Germany, both our Mission Statement and the “Program for Legal Compliance and Corporate Responsibility at Bayer” (Corporate Compliance Program), a code of conduct that contains binding, Group-wide rules for our conduct in the market and toward competitors and each other.

Corporate governance

Responsible corporate management (corporate governance) has had a high priority at Bayer for a very long time. The Board of Management and Supervisory Board were once again highly focused on complying with the requirements of the German Corporate Governance Code in 2006 – including in particular the new provisions introduced on June 12, 2006. As a result, we were able to publish a statement of compliance in December 2006: Bayer once again satisfies all recommendations of the Code.

In 2005 we commissioned corporate auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to review our risk management system. The report presented by PwC at the beginning of 2006 confirms that Bayer has undertaken the measures necessary to establish a suitable early warning system and that the monitoring system is suitable for identifying at an early stage developments that could endanger the existence of the company.