Bayer

Bayer AG is a German multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company, headquartered in Leverkusen and described by Wikipedia as one of the largest pharmaceutical and biomedical companies in the world [6]. Its business spans prescription medicines, consumer health products, agricultural chemicals, seeds and plant biotechnology. In beauty and personal care, its presence runs through its consumer health division, whose skin care brands include Bepanthen and Bepanthol, both built around the vitamin B5 precursor dexpanthenol.

The company began in 1863 as a dyestuffs factory and, at the end of the 19th century, launched Aspirin. Its history also includes a period inside the IG Farben conglomerate during the Nazi era and, more recently, a costly legal fight over the weedkiller Roundup that followed its takeover of Monsanto. Bayer remains an active, publicly traded company.

Bayer was founded in 1863 in Barmen, a town that later became part of Wuppertal in western Germany [6]. It was a partnership between two men with complementary skills: Friedrich Bayer (1825–1880), a dye salesman, and Johann Friedrich Weskott (1821–1876), a master dyer. Bayer looked after the commercial side of the business, while Weskott brought the craft knowledge of dyeing. Wikipedia's infobox gives the founding date as 1 August 1863 and lists Friedrich Bayer alone as founder, while its history section describes the business as a joint venture of the two partners.

The early factory made dyes, and fuchsine and aniline became the company's most important early products. That background in industrial chemistry shaped what Bayer would become: a company that moved from colouring textiles to making medicines, crop protection products and, eventually, everyday self-care goods.

The step that made Bayer a household name came in 1899, when it launched acetylsalicylic acid under the trademarked name Aspirin [6]. By that year the Aspirin trademark had been registered worldwide. Bayer later lost trademark status for the name in the United States, France and the United Kingdom after its American assets and trademarks were confiscated during the First World War. Heroin, too, was a Bayer trademark until after that war.

Bayer was later part of IG Farben, the conglomerate whose assets the Allied Control Council seized after the Second World War because of its role in the Nazi war effort and the Holocaust. That period is described under Controversies below.

The company's later history is shaped by a series of large acquisitions. In 1978 Bayer bought Miles Laboratories, together with its subsidiaries Miles Canada and Cutter Laboratories [6]. The deal brought well-known over-the-counter lines into the group, including Alka-Seltzer, Flintstones Chewable Vitamins and One-A-Day vitamins.

In 2014 Bayer agreed to buy the consumer health business of Merck for $14.2 billion, a purchase that gave it control of brands such as Claritin, Coppertone and Dr. Scholl's. With Coppertone and Dr. Scholl's, the group's consumer business reached further into personal care beyond medicines.

The largest deal followed two years later. In May 2016 Bayer offered to buy the American biotechnology company Monsanto for $62 billion; in September 2016 Monsanto agreed to a raised offer of $66 billion [6]. The acquisition was completed in 2018. Wikipedia describes it as the biggest acquisition by a German company to date. It also became the source of the company's most serious modern legal and financial difficulties.

Bayer AG is an independent, publicly traded company rather than a subsidiary of a larger group. Its shares trade on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the ticker BAYN, and it is a component of both the DAX and the Euro Stoxx 50 indices [6]. Wikipedia lists Bill Anderson as chief executive and Norbert Winkeljohann as chairman of the supervisory board. The company reported revenue of €46.6 billion for 2024 and employed 87,830 people as of 30 June 2026.

The group is organised into three divisions: Pharmaceuticals, Consumer Health and Crop Science. The Bepanthol skin care website is published by Bayer Vital GmbH, a subsidiary based at the company's Leverkusen site, which states on that website that all brands shown are the property of Bayer and its subsidiaries or used under licence [3].

At group level, Bayer describes itself as a global life science company working at the intersection of healthcare and agriculture. Its corporate homepage carries the slogan "Health for all, Hunger for none" [4], summing up the two halves of the business: medicines and consumer health on one side, seeds and crop protection on the other.

The consumer health division frames its work around self-care. According to Bayer, only a minority of people feel confident managing their own health, and the company presents science-based self-care as a way to close that gap. Its stated vision for the division is "to help billions of people live healthier lives through our trusted self-care solutions" [5]. The company says the division reaches more than 650 million consumers in over 100 countries through a portfolio of more than 100 brands.

That portfolio is mostly made up of over-the-counter medicines and supplements: allergy treatments such as Claritin and Aerius, pain relief brands such as Aleve and Aspirin, digestive remedies such as Rennie and Iberogast, and vitamins such as Berocca, Redoxon and One A Day. Skin is one of several categories, listed by the company under "Skin Health" with Bepanthen as its lead brand. Canesten covers women's intimate health and foot skin health, and the hair health category includes Priorin. Wikipedia likewise names Bepanthen and Bepanthol as the skin care products within Bayer's consumer care business.

The skin care range is positioned close to the medical side of the company. The Bepanthol DERMA line is presented with the line "Hilft der Haut, sich selbst zu helfen" ("helps the skin help itself"), and the brand describes the range as dermatologically tested medical skin care "from the house of Bepanthen", based on science and recommended by professionals.

Bayer's beauty-relevant products centre on dexpanthenol. On its Bepanthol website the company explains that dexpanthenol is a provitamin that the body converts into pantothenic acid, also known as vitamin B5 [2]. It is made synthetically from pantothenic acid and is sometimes called panthenol, D-panthenol or provitamin B5. The company draws a distinction between the two mirror-image forms of panthenol: both attract moisture, it says, but only the D-form, dexpanthenol, is biologically active and taken up by skin cells.

According to the same source, dexpanthenol is used at concentrations of 5 percent and above to support the healing of wounds on skin and mucous membranes, while lower concentrations appear in cosmetic skin and hair care, where the ingredient helps the skin hold on to moisture and calms irritation. Bayer says it supports the skin's natural protective barrier and its elasticity.

Bepanthol DERMA is the group's everyday skin care range for dry and sensitive skin. It covers body care and body cleansing, facial care and facial cleansing, lip care and hand care. The company says the lotions and creams contain what it calls a "B5-Regenerations-Komplex" (B5 regeneration complex), intended to support the skin's renewal "from the inside out". It also states that the range soothes itchy, dry skin from the first application.

Products named on the brand's website include:

- Bepanthol DERMA Moisturising Body Lotion (Feuchtigkeitsspendende Körperlotion), presented as daily care for demanding, dry skin. - Bepanthol DERMA Intensive Face Cream (Intensiv Gesichtscreme), described as a dermatologically tested dexpanthenol face cream for very dry, rough skin, including overnight use. - Bepanthol DERMA Moisturising Face Cream SPF 25 (Feuchtigkeitsspendende Gesichtscreme LSF 25), which combines UVA/UVB protection with what the company describes as instant moisture lasting up to 48 hours.

The wider range listed on the site also includes a regenerating body lotion, an SOS care cream, a mild body wash, a mild face wash, a regenerating hand balm, a caring lipstick and a rich lip cream. Alongside the DERMA line, the company lists older Bepanthol body lotions among its established products. Bepanthen, the sister brand named in Bayer's consumer health portfolio, sits under the same skin health heading.

No third-party certifications or independent clinical studies for the skin care range are documented; the moisture and soothing claims above are the company's own.

Bayer's history includes two major controversies, both covered at length in the Wikipedia article on the company.

The first concerns the Nazi era. Bayer was part of IG Farben, whose assets were seized after the Second World War by the Allied Control Council because of the conglomerate's role in the Nazi war effort and its involvement in the Holocaust [6]. That role included the use of slave labour from concentration camps, dangerous medical testing on humans and the production of Zyklon B, the chemical used in gas chambers. After the war, Bayer re-hired several former Nazis to senior positions, among them Fritz ter Meer, who had been convicted at the IG Farben Trial and was briefly imprisoned.

The second concerns Monsanto's herbicide Roundup, which is based on glyphosate. In August 2018, two months after Bayer completed its acquisition of Monsanto, a U.S. jury ordered Monsanto to pay $289 million to a school groundskeeper who said his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma had been caused by regular use of Roundup [6]. In June 2020 the company agreed to pay $9.6 billion to settle more than 10,000 lawsuits claiming harm from the product. Wikipedia states that, because of the financial and reputational damage of the ongoing litigation, the Monsanto merger is considered one of the worst corporate mergers in history.

Bayer itself presents the issue as one it is actively managing. Its corporate homepage carries a section on "Managing the Roundup Litigation" and lists among its recent updates a headline stating that Monsanto had won a landmark Roundup case at the U.S. Supreme Court [4].

Bayer is active. Its corporate homepage lists the Half-Year Financial Report 2026 among its latest company updates [4], and the company continues to operate worldwide across pharmaceuticals, consumer health and crop science. The Bepanthol DERMA skin care range remains on sale, with its body, face, lip and hand care lines presented on the brand's website.