Bayer hires consumer product leader

Bayer HealthCare has hired former Pfizer executive Erica L Mann to serve as the new president of its Consumer Care Division. The division is the second-largest over-the-counter drug business in the world, with products including Aleve (naproxen), for pain relief, and the Alka-Seltzer line.

Mann was most recently president and general manager of Pfizer Nutritional Health and a member of the Pfizer senior management team, a post she took when Pfizer acquired Wyeth, where she had been senior vice president, Nutrition.

Earlier in her 25-year career, she was managing director, Wyeth Australia & New Zealand, and also led Wyeth's Pharmaceutical business in South Africa for over a decade as managing director and chief executive officer.

She joins Bayer HealthCare effective March 14 and will become a member of the company's executive committee.

Mann succeeds Gary Balkema, who will retire after 16 years with Bayer at the end of March. Balkema, who is a member of the Bayer HealthCare executive committee, was hired by Bayer to serve as president of the US Consumer Care division in December 1994, after leading American Cyanamid's Lederle Consumer Health Division, an organisation he joined in 1977. He was appointed general manager of Bayer's Consumer Care Division in May 2000.

The Consumer Care business, which was formed in 1995, is based in Morristown, New Jersey, and has operations in more than 140 countries. In 2009, the business' net sales accounted for €3.1bn of Bayer HealthCare's €16.0bn in total sales.

The division also includes the Intendis prescription dermatology business, which is headquartered in Berlin, Germany, and was founded in 2005 as a subsidiary of Schering AG. Intendis sells treatments for acne, rosacea, eczema, psoriasis and fungal infections.