Marijn Emmanuel Dekkers (born 22 September 1957 in

Tilburg Tilburg () is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Netherlands, in the southern Provinces of the Netherlands, province of North Brabant. With a population of 22 ...

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

) is a Dutch-American former pharmaceutical businessman. He was

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

Bayer AG Bayer AG (English: , commonly pronounced ; ) is a German multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company and is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies and biomedical companies in the world. Headquartered in Leverkusen, Bayer's ...

from 2010 to 2016. He was CEO of Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. from 2002 to 2009. He was Chairman of

Unilever Unilever PLC () is a British multinational consumer packaged goods company headquartered in London, England. It was founded on 2 September 1929 following the merger of Dutch margarine producer Margarine Unie with British soap maker Lever B ...

from 2016 to 2019. He is also Founder and Chairman of Novalis LifeSciences LLC, an investment and advisory firm for the Life Science industry.

Early life

Dekkers grew up as the youngest of three children of a merchant in the Dutch city of Tilburg. After attending local schools, St. Aloysius (primary school) and St. Odulphus (Lyceum), in 1976 he began studying

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...

at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. Three years later he began studying chemical technology at

Eindhoven University of Technology The Eindhoven University of Technology (), Abbreviation, abbr. TU/e, is a public university, public technical university in the Netherlands, situated in Eindhoven. In 2020–21, around 14,000 students were enrolled in its Bachelor of Science, BS ...

, where he received his master's degree and PhD in

chemical engineering Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of the operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials ...

Career

In 1985 Dekkers worked for

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1892, incorporated in the New York (state), state of New York and headquartered in Boston. Over the year ...

(GE) in different research departments located in the US and the Netherlands. In 1988, he became Research Director of the GE range of

polymers A polymer () is a substance or material that consists of very large molecules, or macromolecules, that are constituted by many repeating subunits derived from one or more species of monomers. Due to their broad spectrum of properties, b ...

and subsequently held management positions in various other polymer units. In 1995, Dekkers joined Allied Signal (later named

Honeywell International Honeywell International Inc. is an American public company, publicly traded, multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four are ...

Inc.) and took over the management of various business units. In 2000, he became a director at the Boston-based Thermo Electron Corporation, one of the world's leading specialists in the manufacture of laboratory instruments. Within a short time, Dekkers implemented a complete corporate reorganization and became President and CEO in 2002. In this role, he initiated further extensive restructuring measures, divesting various organizational units and strengthening the company's core business by means of targeted acquisitions, including the purchase in 2006 of the laboratory consumables supplier

Fisher Scientific Fisher Scientific International, Inc. (NYSE: FSH) was a laboratory supply and biotechnology company that provided products and services to the global scientific research and clinical laboratory markets until its merger with Thermo Electron in 20 ...

. After the acquisition, the company renamed as

Thermo Fisher Scientific Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is an American life science and clinical research company. It is a global supplier of analytical instruments, clinical development solutions, specialty diagnostics, laboratory, pharmaceutical and biotechnology s ...

, which employed 30,000 people in six business groups. On 1 January 2010 Dekkers was appointed to the board of Bayer AG and on 1 October 2010 he took over as CEO from Werner Wenning. On 3 June 2014 Bayer AG announced that its Supervisory Board had extended Marijn Dekkers' term as CEO by two years, on expiration of the initial five-year period. Dekkers cited family reasons for extending his contract only until the end of 2016. He left Bayer on 30 April 2016 and was succeeded by Werner Baumann on 1 May 2016. Since April 2016 he was the Chairman of

until 13 November 2019. In 2017 Dekkers founded Novalis LifeSciences LLC, an investment and advisory firm for the Life Science industry (www.novalislifesciences.com).

Awards and recognition

"Manager of the Year 2014" by German business magazine "Manager Magazin" "Business person of the Year 2015" by the "Finanzen Verlag" publishing group and the readers of its publications "€uro am Sonntag", "€uro" and "Börse online" "Most Innovative CEO International 2015" by the German industry's "Innovation Award"

Controversy

In 2013 some controversy was sparked during a Financial Times panel discussion with relation to Bayer's kidney and liver cancer drug

Nexavar Sorafenib, sold under the brand name Nexavar, is a kinase inhibitor drug approved for the treatment of primary kidney cancer (advanced renal cell carcinoma), advanced primary liver cancer (hepatocellular carcinoma), FLT3-ITD positive AML and ra ...

. He spoke at a conference in 2014, saying

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF; pronounced ), known in some English-speaking settings as Doctors Without Borders, is a charity that provides humanitarian medical care. It is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) of French origin known for its projects in conflict zo ...

responded to Dekkers' comment, saying that it Dekkers replied to this, referring to the decision made by the Indian government, not to protect a patent on Nexavar and the intellectual property of Bayer. He also said:

Personal life

Dekkers holds both Dutch and U.S.

citizenship Citizenship is a membership and allegiance to a sovereign state. Though citizenship is often conflated with nationality in today's English-speaking world, international law does not usually use the term ''citizenship'' to refer to nationalit ...

References

External links

Profile at europeanceo.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dekkers, Marijn 1957 births Living people Radboud University Nijmegen alumni Eindhoven University of Technology alumni Dutch chemical engineers German chief executives People from Tilburg