Marijn Emmanuel Dekkers (born 22 September 1957 in

Tilburg Tilburg () is a city and municipality in the Netherlands, in the southern province of North Brabant. With a population of 222,601 (1 July 2021), it is the second-largest city or municipality in North Brabant after Eindhoven and the seventh-larg ...

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

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

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

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

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

Unilever Unilever plc is a British multinational consumer goods company with headquarters in London, England. Unilever products include food, condiments, bottled water, baby food, soft drink, ice cream, instant coffee, cleaning agents, energy dri ...

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 natural science that covers the elements that make up matter to the compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, proper ...

at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. Three years later he began studying chemical technology at Eindhoven University of Technology, where he received his master's degree and PhD in

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

Career

In 1985 Dekkers worked for

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable ene ...

(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 (; Greek '' poly-'', "many" + '' -mer'', "part") is a substance or material consisting of very large molecules called macromolecules, composed of many repeating subunits. Due to their broad spectrum of properties, both synthetic a ...

and subsequently held management positions in various other polymer units. In 1995, Dekkers joined

Allied Signal AlliedSignal was an American aerospace, automotive and engineering company created through the 1985 merger of Allied Corp. and Signal Companies. It subsequently purchased Honeywell for $14.8 billion in 1999, and thereafter adopted the Honeywell ...

(later named

Honeywell International Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building technologies, performance m ...

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 2 ...

. After the acquisition, the company renamed as

Thermo Fisher Scientific Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is an American supplier of scientific instrumentation, reagents and consumables, and software services. Based in Waltham, Massachusetts, Thermo Fisher was formed through the merger of Thermo Electron and Fisher Sc ...

, 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). In 2019 Dekkers was named Chairman of the Board of Directors of Ginkgo Bioworks, a Synthetic Biology biotech company in Boston.

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 ), also known as Doctors Without Borders, is a humanitarian medical non-governmental organisation (NGO) or charity of French origin known for its projects in conflict zones and in countries affected by endemic diseases. ...

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 "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection". Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and ...

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