>> when i asked the scientist this priority, my personal view is that we also learned that patients are much different and

there will be different avenues, so we will have to build a portfolio of interventions. printing: on this episode of leaders with laqua i travel to the firm's headquarters in copenhagen, denmark. i ask him about the global sensation, how he's navigating the company's meteoric rise, and the sweeping changes they could bring across a range of industries. thank you so much for being on bloomberg with us. after decades of research, basically you find a molecule that changes everything in terms of weight loss drugs. were you taken by surprise at the appetite for these drugs and how mainstream they are? lars: i would product like that, it starts with surprises in innovation because

there are many being made on goal and most fail. and the winners are often the one that surprises people the most. francine: why do you think this surprise or success was an expected, did it capture something in society that you are not ready for? >> i think we have seen many decades of our company focused on type one diabetes. there was an increase in type 2 diabetes and for many years type two diabetes was not intensively treated. then it was reassured that you need to treat type 2 diabetes to prevent comorbidities and that increase the diabetes. now we see the same with the obesity that perhaps we felt obesity is not a real disease, not something you can should treat. but that's being established by understanding the underlying causes of obesity, that there

are a lot in genetics, and innovations that can actually treat the disease and prevent the comorbidities. so i think it's a repeat in a way of what happened with type 2 diabetes and that opens the market and turns out to be way bigger than the diabetes market. francine: how big is it to have a lifelong market and how do you see that changing? >> i think we are here to learn how patient journeys will be different. some will be on lifelong journeys, some will have progressive obesity that will put more and more weight on and they will need more efficacious medicine. perhaps there will be some who are on treatment for some time and they will have a different trajectory. i don't think we have seen much of this yet. i'm not a scientist myself, but

scientists say priority and mechanism will tell you that it's treatment. my personal view is that patients are much different and there will be different avenues. so we will have to build a portfolio of interventions, lifestyle will also play into it for some of them, and i think we could help many patients get down to a weight that they could maintain and live the life that they want to live and write many comorbidities. francine: we heard from food companies that the chief executives are having crisis talks. does this mean there will be a wider adoption of these drugs, does it mean people will eat and drink 30% less? do you see it changing our societies? lars: i think there will be many changes but with that comes opportunity. there will be a different preference for snacking. so i think we still need to eat. maybe less of the snacking and a

preference for more of the healthy stuff. so i think it's about the evolving business and moving to where the market is. another thing is is 8020 perspective -- 80-20 perspective. you will have a few patients who are really heavy consumers. and with the start of treatment they will be a relative picker on some of these companies, but it's a bit hyped to only see what we see because we are only scratching the surface and a number of patients we are treating and it takes time to scale manufacturing to get to many more millions of patients. francine: hollywood has also adopted your weight loss drug, is that it good or a bad thing? lars: we have a situation where social media is filled with communication on our product and

that's new for us. we are focused on educating physicians. in most countries we cannot do direct to consumer advertisement. it's really important for us to understand which products are improved for type two diabetes, which are approved for diabetes, what's the mechanism and how it should be used. and what we see for data, we could see the profile of those who use our medicines. we could see they are on average people with a high bmi well above 30, so that the approved labor. so we feel comfortable that it is people in need of medical intervention to treat serious obesity and situations. francine: you have become a phenomenon and there are memes all over social media and some say the problem with this is that it could lead to more eating disorders. and this is probably because of

the increase in social media. what do pharma companies do, can they do anything to balance this? lars: we have spent some time understanding what this means and we can't realize that -- and we've come to realize we cannot control social media. we tried to be present and get our messaging in, but all our medicines take a physician writing a script. we focus on the physician to make sure they understand what are the mechanisms, who are the appropriate patients, what's the labor, and then i think we have to also trust the physicians to do what is right for their patient and they should for sure not prescribed for people living with an eating disorder. francine: coming up, i ask lars about criticism the country has faced over its prices, with some analysts predicting the weight loss industry could be worth $150 billion a year.

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for weight loss drug makers like novo nordisk, but challenges remain. the company's patents expire in the u.s. and the eu at the end of the next decade in rival drugs are already emerging like set down by eli lilly. i asked the chief executive about regulatory pressures and future growth. how do you think about pricing? you must of gotten some difficult questions from governments, but this goes back to innovation. >> most products are priced according to the values they bring and i feel really good about the value of our medicines, what they bring to the patient, but also the value to the health care system. and we have today, health care

systems around the world who were designed for acute care and finding 80% of the cost of the health care system is linked to chronic care and we have portfolio products that are addressing the chronic diseases of our day and age. diabetes, obesity and the comorbidities that follow that. we know there are protections that say by 2035, the world obesity federation predicts that the cost burden to society will be $4 trillion of people living with obesity. and that cost is going to be taken up by health care systems that are already struggling today by aging populations. a shortage of labor and a lot of workers left the health care systems after the pandemic. so what is actually the value of the medicine we have, and if you

invest in that, yes, there is a cost upfront. maybe we can discuss how we deal with that, but there is tremendous value in terms of preventing costs, and keeping people out of the hospital. francine: but this is a crucial moment because the price will probably go down as you had more competitors come in. we know eli lilly could be a competitor. this is a crucial time where you have to make investment decisions when prices are higher and you have more cash coming in. is that how you view it? lars: yes, to put a bit of color around it, the same forecast predicts that there will be one billion people living with obesity in 3035. we are perhaps serving one or 2 million of those today, so there's a huge market and there's a place for more, and then you are right that in most markets when you get more competition and also over time, pricing moves down because you

start treating those who accept the higher price one in the u.s. and that's commercial insurance and then you get broad access and you get your patient's payload price. so, if you just take our leading diabetes product in the u.s. since launch, in 2018, the price we get is some 40% lower than when we launched. that's also not mentioned in the politics. instead the list price is mentioned. which is what we put in our account. francine: the u.s. is such a large market would you delist or change headquarters to the u.s.? lars: that's unlikely. we are controlled by a foundation that is anchored in denmark. we have a lot of footprint in denmark. having said that, we do invest

and expand a lot globally. most of what we sell in the u.s. we also produce in the u.s. in many aspects we are a u.s. company. with headquarters being a corporate headquarter that's based in denmark. francine: you think of denmark and you think of novo because it was the size of revenues, which is bigger than gdp, is that uncomfortable? lars: i think the perspective should be corrected because there is comparison about market cap with danish gdp and we all know it's an economic flow metric for the flow in the market cap is the total value of the company. if we compare nova in order with everything in denmark, we would be tiny. but there is also the point that our expansions, more than 30,000 in denmark, huge capex investment, we are fueling the

gdp growth and we take that quite seriously, so the jobs we create i don't think will disappear again. and now we talk about expanding in the u.s. it doesn't, as the same as moving. it's the same in the u.s. we would be careful and respectful in how we grow, so we could do that in a sustainable way. francine: that's increasing supply with new factories. lars: we have made huge investment decisions and these are the billion dollar commitments per year and it takes four or five years to build some of these facilities and we started already years back so we have more and more lines kicking in on a ongoing basis, but some are --

francine: are you also looking for acquisitions? lars: yes, most products came from our in-house which is a bit unusual. we expect to carry on with that but we can see we can complement that. typically it would be early-stage where they have great signs. we have -- so we can express the sign in a better way than they could do on their own. so it makes a perfect marriage and some are better than what each can do on their own. francine: are companies having a harder time after covid? there seems to be not trusting pharmaceutical companies, vaccines being questioned, have you felt backlash? lars: yes.

for me, that's a really sad situation to be in because, had it not been for some of the small ones who came up with vaccines, and then teaming up with some of the largest forces of our industry to, in record time, get approval, i think the world would've looked much different today. i respect that some do not like vaccines, but a majority of us have had a number of shots and that led to a lot of debate about patents really needed in on this we have an ability to patent innovation and there's not going to be an innovation so there will be no new products. so i think there's something about equality, how we distribute products and honestly a lot of the rich countries ended up grabbing products for

their own population. they did not get access and then leads to a debate where vip is the right way to go and that is the wrong discretion. we have to figure out how to show solidarity in a way where we figure out the whole world needs to benefit in a fair way, but if we take the incentive away for innovation, it all wears off. francine: coming up, he tells me about his leadership style at the helm of europe's most valuable company. ♪

theme: the market value of novo nordisk is bigger than the economy. more than double the assets of the gates foundation. i asked lars how he handles the company's success, and his approach to corporate culture. so are you enjoying success or with it does bring a lot of responsibility? lars: at a time supplies had been cut by 40%. we were in low single-digit growth and it's much harder to invest in the business doing things you want to do compared to what they are today. i enjoy that, but obviously it comes with many challenges about

how to sustain the success of a company. francine: what kind of leader are you or what kind of leader would your employees say you are? lars: you should ask them, i hope they would say that i am authentic, i am relatively easy to read. i would also hope they say that i'm curious because i'm not -- in anything, but i found that there has not been a problem yet in the company we couldn't solve if we actually mobilize the right people. so i'm born with big nose and big ears and i use the attributes of that each and every day to collect opinions from the company. and then it's my role to combine it into an opinion, together with my team, and make sure we make the right choice.

francine: does the perfect leader in 2024 need to be a visionary or a problem solver? lars: i would say if i have to solve the problems, it's a problem. for example, when covid-19 arrived, we decided to close down the offices and we cap manufacturers running and we all went home. and what you do, you need to establish a crisis response team to deal with that. so the first decision i made was, i should not be part of it. i was a bit out of the loop for a couple of days, but i knew if i put myself into that, i would become the bottleneck in that company and they would have lost their -- so i asked the cfo to chair that and then i could still be there for everybody and people could come to me and check in and i would try to get

a view for what are other companies doing, what's happening, and give some input, so if the co turns into the problem solver, the company needs another ceo. francine: have you changed as a co? lars: i believe i have, when i was promoted, i took a step up in the team, so i went from being a colleague to the leader of the team. i think they would tell me today that they would have liked to me to be a bit quicker to act like the boss, but for me it was not natural to be bossy after one night. so i think i have been growing into the role and i feel more comfortable today. actually listening to my gut, which is a combination of your own feelings but also your

experiences, and earlier say what i believe in, and that creates clarity for an organization with more than 60,000 people. francine: saturday mornings, i understand you have off. lars: saturday is a day at i powered down. i ran at a relative high pace throughout the week, tried to wrap things up, then saturday is a quiet day for me, in terms of work, and i start by playing tennis with my wife. we go for a swim only at year-round. after that, have a nice lunch, and i'm on to a good trajectory for the weekend. and then sunday, i try to prepare for the coming weeks. but, through the weekend, i would send either no emails or very few emails because i want to drive a culture where we get an opportunity to spend the weekend as they fancy. i think what we do is so

difficult and it takes creative thinking to succeed. if you are always busy, your reflection is just too narrow. and i generally believe that monday morning some a better leader than i am friday afternoon. i want to take all my vacations and i believe him a much better ceo after a vacation. francine: what's your best piece of advice you ever received and what's the worst piece of advice you have ever received? lars: the best advice would probably be, give people a fair chance to succeed and those can actually do much better. perhaps also you believe based on short-term performance. so, trust people and give them what is needed for them to succeed. you will see people succeeding.

worst piece would be something that was influenced -- influenced by politics or spinning facts. i am hyper allergic to politics and to try to take advantage of a position. i have had up experience during my career where i gave my recognition because somebody, a close colleague completely twisted some facts. we had just agreed how to approach. my colleague just turned it around. i said, ok, integrity is a whole different thing. if people play tricks, it's not my game, whatsoever. i just said, ok, i'm out of here. but we started out as i say.

so, any advice that is not based on decency and following the facts i have a really hard time with. francine: thank you for your time today. ♪ ryan t. writes, "moving is stressful.

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