Leverkusen, Germany, January 24--Lanxess, the chemical spin-off from Bayer, is to begin trading on the Frankfurt stock exchange on 31 Jan 2005. One Lanxess share will be allocated for every 10 shares in Bayer AG.
Some shares held by institutional investors will have to be sold as the company will not be included in the DAX index of leading publicly traded companies. From 2006, costs are to be reduced by some EUR 20 M/y through reduction in personnel expenditure.
Managers in Germany will have their salaries frozen in 2005 and those overseas will received significantly smaller increases than those previously budgeted. In 2006, payments to 3900 employees in Germany will be brought back to the union scale level.
Currently they are paid at rate that is EUR 200 /month higher. Globally, there are 20,000 staff employed by Lanxess, with around 50% being in Germany where the company has sites at Leverkusen, Dormagen and Uerdingen.
