When the CEO of Novo Nordisk A/S Lars Fergard Jergensen contacted a video call with the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Helj Lund, he was expected to catch a normal knee.
Instead, Georgessen says Lund tells him effectively that he needs to go.
After a 53 % decrease over the past year at the price of obese shot makers in Wigofi, the setbacks in new drug experiences to lose weight and intensify competition from Eli Lilly & Co.
So Friday, Novo said it replaced Georgessen, the executive authority that brought one of the largest drug privileges in the past decade to the market with OzemPIC and Wegovy – $ 26 billion of smell films that entered into the madness of celebrities and cultural phenomena.
“I respect that,” said Georgessen, 58, in an interview. “I think this is part of the game, so I say. Not for me to judge the standards.”
This step was a surprise to the market as much as it was for the executive authority. Georgessen says after he contacted the teams and personal meetings that followed more than a little day, it became clear to him that the Lund and Novo board was looking for a new leader of the company that quickly loses it in the obesity market.
Lilly, her arc rival jumps forward with Zepbound, is his obesity drugStabilizeIt can spoil more than wegovy. There is more fierce competition in the cards, with Lilly in the Lead in the Race for strong and easy obesity pills. The next generation candidate from NovoIn mindSMAGLUTIDE SMAGLUTIDE (the main component of OzemPIC and Wegovy), not less than the company’s hopes and analysts in clinical trials.
Lund said in an interview that Novo would look at external and internal candidates for the next CEO. The pharmaceutical maker had five senior executives in his long history, and none of them came outside the company. Although in a call with analysts, Lund said repeatedly that Novo’s strategy will remain the same, in the interview, it was more accurate.
He said that the Novo game “must develop and change to be suitable for the market and the environment.” For Lund, the turmoil in Novo coincides with a loud period that he passed in another company: BP. Last month, he said that he would step down from BP’s chairman while the UK energy giant is struggling to win the investor’s confidence after two major strategy in his watch. The BP market evaluation when Lund became a president about $ 106 billion. Now, about $ 78 billion.
An unprecedented step
In Novo, the departure of JorgenSen is an unprecedented step for a company that is proud of its stability. The surprise of the work is a reflection of the largest contributor to the Danish pharmaceutical maker, the Novo Nordsk Foundation, which controls how the company is operating.
Georgessen said that before contacting Lund, he always felt strong support from the Novo Council.
“There are no unstable issues between the administration and the council,” he said. “There were no such gaps in the strategic choice.
Like many other Novo managers, JorgenSen spent his career in the company, which has long focused on the diabetes market. Insulin has always been the primary product of Novo.
When Jorgensen took the position of CEO in 2017, the company was moving in a shift towards treatment not only diabetes, but also obesity. OzemPIC struck the US market in 2018. In 2021, Jorgensen brought its sister -in -law to lose weight to the market in the United States.
Novo shares rose as it became clear that strong new drugs were creating a new market for obesity treatments. In 2023, the company proved that Wegovy can reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes, a decisive step towards making insurance companies pay for expensive treatments.
After that, a little less than a year, Novo’s challenges began to accumulate. The company had to defend its prices for Ozmpic and Wegovy in Congress, with Georgessen being interrogated by Bernie Sanders during a hearing in the Senate.
Shortly later, Cagrisema failed to upgrade their potential, while Lilly has achieved clinical victories. Novo also continued the struggle to fulfill the demand for Wagovi, a factor that some analysts are now saying and have helped to tilt the market towards a rival night shot.
“Last year, when Novo did not send beginners doses of Wagofi. I think they have begun to create a permanent transformation in the market,” said Evan Sigramman, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets. “If one of the connection has an option to write Zepbound or Wegovy and continue writing the texts of Wegovy and their patient was unable to find the medicine, they should return and write the Zepbound text … You are doing it only several times to say, you know what, I have done so. I am going to change the descriptive factors permanently.”
Sorensen’s return
This departure prepares a return for JorgenSen predecessor, Lars Ripan Sorensen, who led Novo during the first 16 years of the first decade of the twentieth century, and will now join the supervisory council, initially in the role of the observer and as a member of a full board of directors of next year. The Foundation issued a statement that supports Sorensen, saying that “his experience and vision will be valuable.”
The Novo Foundation dominates the richest medicines in the world charitable world, which gives it a 77 % voting share in the company although it maintains 28 % of its capital. Its assets lost 4.8 % of the value last year, leaving it with the holdings of 1.06 trillion Kroner Denmark ($ 159 billion), about twice the Gates Foundation.
Mark Ellis, portfolio manager at Notshell Asset Management Ltd. said. , “Novo has already suffers from depression, we believe that it provides a decent value for those who can consider the uncertainty in the short term.”
But for many employees, the news came as a shock.
insectionThe employees were sent by Broadcaster TV2 on Friday, where the employees revive while Jorgensen walks on the stairs in the open central atrium, multi -storey of the drug headquarters.
“I was really a beacon for all of us,” Jacob Petersen, chief of diabetes, obesity and hybrid, wrote on LinkedIn.
This story was originally shown on Fortune.com
