Employees

The number of employees has been converted to full-time equivalents, which means part-time employees are included in proportion to their contractual working hours.

On June 30, 2008, the Bayer Group had 107,100 employees, 900 more than on December 31, 2007. We employed 17,000 people in North America, including the 300 employees of the recently acquired U.S. company Possis Medical, Inc. Bayer had 19,800 employees in the Asia-Pacific region and 14,900 in Latin America/Africa/Middle East. The number of employees in Europe was 55,400, including for the first time the 600 employees of Sagmel. In Germany we had 37,500 employees, accounting for 35.0 percent of the Group workforce. Personnel expenses in the first half of 2008 amounted to €3,852 million (H1 2007: €3,792 million).