Board of Management
Biographies
Werner Wenning
Werner Wenning
Chairman of the Board of Management of Bayer AG
Werner Wenning has been Chairman of the Board of Management of Bayer AG since April 26, 2002.
Born on October 21, 1946 in Leverkusen-Opladen, Wenning joined Bayer AG in Leverkusen as a commercial trainee on April 1, 1966. He then took a year’s training in finance and accounting and worked for a further year in the Corporate Auditing Department. From 1970 to 1975 he established and managed the finance and accounting department of Bayer Industrial S.A., a company that had just been formed in Lima, Peru.
On his return to Germany he worked for another three years in Corporate Auditing, returning to Lima in 1978 to become Managing Director and administrative head of the Peruvian company.
In 1983, Wenning was appointed head of the staff department of what was then the Health Care Sector in Leverkusen. Three years later he switched to the Plastics Business Group as head of marketing for thermoplastics, and in 1987 assumed responsibility for that business group’s worldwide marketing operations.
On April 1, 1991 he was seconded for a year to the Treuhandanstalt privatization agency in Berlin. In 1992 Wenning went abroad again, this time to Barcelona as Managing Director of Bayer Hispania Industrial S.A. and Senior Bayer Representative for Spain. In April 1996 he became head of Corporate Planning and Controlling in Leverkusen. He was appointed to the Board of Management of Bayer AG in February 1997.
Wenning holds a number of offices outside Bayer. He is, for example:
- Vice President of the German Chemical Industry Association (VCI), Frankfurt;
- a member of the Shareholders’ Committee of Henkel AG & Co. KGaA, Düsseldorf;
- a member of the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Bank AG, Frankfurt;
- a member of the Supervisory Board of E.ON AG, Düsseldorf;
- a member of the Supervisory Boards of HDI V.a.G. and Talanx AG, both located in Hannover.
Werner Wenning is married and has two grown-up daughters.