"Research is the key to success", says Werner Wenning, President of the Council of management of Bayer

The Bayer Group aims to further strengthen innovation as one of the main objectives of its corporate strategy. "An important key to success is in research, where we need to maximize our potential and applied consistently results", said today Werner Wenning, Chairman of the Board of Directors, during the press Forum "perspective Bayer of innovation 2006" held in Leverkusen. In the current year, the group will invest in research and development of 1.9 billion euros, without counting Schering. "This is the largest budget in the pharmaceutical sector in Germany," Wenning said. Already today, the effort of research of the company generates three new patent applications per working day. In 2005, the Group obtained a turnover exceeding 4 billion euros exclusively with new products and applications.

With the acquisition of Schering AG, Bayer strengthens particularly the activities of research in the pharmaceutical area. "Intensive pharmaceutical business in research never contributed before a very high share of the turnover of the group", said Wenning to 140 journalists from 16 countries. With sales of 9.1 billion euros and a research budget of 1.6 billion euros (figures based on data from the year 2005), the new company Bayer Schering Pharma, Berlin-based, it will become one of the largest pharmaceutical companies of Germany. It is intended especially enhance the therapeutic areas of cardiovascular and cancer.

Bayer highlights advances in the pharmaceutical field among the prepared Nexavar against kidney cancer, which was released in the United States.UU. at the end of 2005 in record time, three years below the average. This year, Bayer was authorized for this drug in the EU. The active principle is also at an advanced stage of clinical trials for indications of liver, skin and lung cancer. Other examples of successes in pharmaceutical research are the antithrombotic rivaroxabán, as well as the extensions of the authorization for the contraceptive YAZ and the preparation against multiple sclerosis Betaferón.

Bayer MaterialScience research activities focus on new applications, organic production methods and tailor-made solutions for customers. This operational company invested last year more than 250 million of euros in research and development. In addition, about 80 million euros in development costs for joint projects with clients. Also here we have one of the largest budgets for r & d sector, amounting to three percent of the turnover of the operative society. Investments are worthwhile: more than one-fifth of the turnover of Bayer MaterialScience is generated with new products and applications developed in the past five years.

Nanotechnology is one of the key technologies for the future, and occupies a central place in the research of materials of Bayer. The possibilities offered are countless, from surfaces that repel dirt to applications in the field of medicine or paintings that regenerate themselves after suffering little damage.

Following the acquisition of Schering AG are 12,700 persons engaged in the research and development at Bayer. Of them, just under 30 percent works in the United States.UU., and more than 60 percent in Europe. With more than 6,100 employees, Germany continues to be the site of most important research of Bayer AG.

But also other sections employees are called upon to contribute their ideas on possible new products. With the initiative "Triple i" (the name is derived from the initials of the words "inspiration", "ideas" and "innovation") is intended to stimulate the creative potential of 110,000 employees around the world, whose ideas will be analysed by specialists and ideallydeveloped to transform them into innovative products. To this end, the company has made available this year EUR 50 million. More than 1,600 proposals, of which more than 25 seem very promising have been received since the launch of the initiative in April 2006.