Employees

On March 31, 2009, the Bayer Group had 108,700 employees, 100 more than on December 31, 2008. We employed 16,800 people in North America, 21,300 in the Asia/Pacific region and 15,900 in Latin America/Africa/Middle East. The number of employees in Europe was 54,700. In Germany we had 36,800 employees, accounting for 33.9% of the Group workforce. These figures include 2,500 trainees worldwide. Personnel expenses in the first quarter of 2009 amounted to €1,891 million (Q1 2008: €1,988 million).

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.