lars: we are scratching the surface and the number of patients we are treating. it takes some time to scale to many more millions of patients. francine: this is the man in charge of europe's most valuable company, novo nordisk, and its

blockbuster diabetes and obesity drugs ozempic and wigovy, containing an ingredient revolutionizing the weight loss market and generating billions in sales. celebrities have helped their popularity soar. sharon osbourne and elon musk have all publicly talked about taking ozempic or wigovy, and have had further backing from oprah winfrey. it's a global phenomenon, reaching millions on social media apps including tiktok. but it is not without controversy, including possible side effects, high prices, and the company's lobbying efforts receiving criticism around the world. and in some cases, patients might also need to take the drugs indefinitely to avoid regaining weight. chief executive lars fruergaard jorgensen says obesity is a disease and thinks the company will learn from its growing number of patients. lars: they will tell you it is chronic 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. francine: in this episode i travel to the firm's headquarters in copenhagen, denmark, and i ask about the global sensation, how he is navigating the company's meteoric rise and the sweeping changes they could bring across a range of industries. ♪ lars, thank you so much for being on bloomberg with us. lars: thanks for having me. francine: after decades of research, novo 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: yeah, i would actually say there are many surprises when you get a product like that. it starts with the surprises and -- in the innovation. there are many shots being made

on goal and most fail. the winner is often the one that surprises people the most. francine: why do you think this surprise or success was unexpected? did it capture something in society that you were not ready for? lars: i think we have seen first, many decades of our company was focused on type one diabetes, and then because of lifestyle changes, perhaps genetics there was an increase , in type two diabetes. for many years type 2 diabetes was not intensively treated. then they showed you really need to treat type 2 diabetes to prevent comorbidities. that increased the diabetes market a lot. now we are kind of seeing the same with obesity. for years, we felt perhaps this -- obesity was not a real disease, not something you should treat, but that is being established by understanding the underlying causes of obesity and that there's a lot of play in

genetics and also innovations that can treat the disease, help people reduce weight, and prevent the comorbidities. i think it's a repeat in a way of what happened with type two diabetes, and it suddenly opens the market that turns out to be way bigger than the diabetes market. francine: how difficult is it to have a lifelong treatment, and again how do you see that , changing? lars: i think we are yet to learn how patient journeys will be much different. some will be on lifelong treatment. some will have progressive obesity that will keep you putting more weight on and they will need more efficacious medicine. there will be some who will be on treatment for some time. they will have a different trajectory. i don't think we have seen much of this yet. when i ask the scientists -- i'm not a scientist myself -- they say the priority and mechanism will tell you that it is chronic

treatment. my personal view is that we will learn 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 can help many patients get down to a weight that they can maintain and live the life they want to live. and avoid many corporate duties desk comorbidities. -- comorbidities. francine: we also heard from food companies, the chief executives of some of the big groups are having crisis talks, and does this mean there will be a wider adoption of these drugs? does it mean people are going to eat and drink 30% less? do you see it really changing our societies? lars: i think there will be many changes, but i think with that also comes opportunities. there will perhaps be a different preference for snacking, so they will still need to eat. maybe perhaps a bit less of unhealthy snacking and a

preference for more of the healthy stuff. i think for companies it is also about following the trend and evolving your business and moving toward where the market is. i think there is probably an 80/20 perspective here, like in many other sectors, that you will have a few patients who are really heavy consumers, and if those startup treatment, i think -- start up treatment, i think they will be bigger on some of these companies. but in general, i think it is a bit hyped when we see the reactions we see. we are only scratching the surface in the number patients we are treating and it takes quite some time to scale to get -- scale manufacturing to get to many more millions of patients. francine: hollywood has also adopted your weight loss drugs. is that a good or bad thing? lars: we now have the situatoin where social media communicates around our products, and that is completely new for us.

we are focused on educating physicians in most countries countries we cannot do direct to consumer advertisement. in all countries it is important for physicians to understand which are approved for type 2 diabetes, which are approved for obesity. what is the mechanism and how should it be used? when we see the data from insurance companies, etc. we can , see the profile of those who use our medicines. we can see that they are on average people with very high pmi, well above 30. that is the approved label to feel comfortable about. -- level to feel comfortable about. that it is people in need of intervention to treat serious obesity situations. francine: but you have become such a phenomenon. there are memes. you are right. it is all over social media, and some are saying the problem with this is it could lead to more eating disorders. this is probably because of the increase in social media. what do pharma companies do? can they do anything to kind of

balance this? lars: i think we have to spend some time on understanding what this means, and we have come to realize we cannot control social media. we try to be present and get our messaging in, but all our medicines take a physician writing a script. so we focus on the physician to make sure they understand what are the mechanisms, who are the appropriate patients, and then i think we have to also trust that the physicians will do what is right for their patient and they should for sure not prescribe for people living with an eating disorder. francine: coming up, i asked lars fruergaard jorgensen about criticism the company has faced over its prices. some analysts predicting the weight loss drug industry could be worth $150 billion a year. ♪

francine: globally, more than one billion people are thought to be obese. it's a crucial market for weight loss drug makers like novo nordisk but challenges remain. , the company's patents expire in the u.s. and e.u. at the end of the next decade, and rival drugs are already emerging. i asked chief executive lars fruergaard jorgensen about regulatory pressures and future growth. how do you think about pricing? you must have had some difficult questions from governments, but also, this goes back to innovation. lars: most products are priced according to the value they bring. i feel really good about the value of our medicines, what they bring to the individual patient, but also the value to the health care system. we have today health care systems around the world who were typically designed for

acute care. but finding that cost in the health care system is linked to chronic care. we have portfolio products that are really addressing some of the chronic diseases of our day and age. diabetes, obesity, and the comorbidities that follow that. we know there are protections that say by 2025, the world obesity organization predicts that the cost burden to society will be $4 trillion of people living with obesity. and that cost is going to turn out to be taken up by health care systems who are already struggling today by aging populations and a shortage of labor. a lot of workers left the health care systems during or after the pandemic. so what is the actual value of the medicine we have? if you invest in that, yes, there is a cost upfront. maybe we can discuss how we deal

with that. but there is a tremendous value in terms of preventing cost and keeping people out of hospital. francine: but this is a crucial moment because your price will probably go down as you have more competitors coming in. we know of eli lilly and amgen could be a competitor. i guess this is a crucial time when you have to make investment decisions, when prices are high 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 there will be a billion people living with obesity in 2035. we are perhaps serving one or two million of those. there is a huge market and there is a place for more. you are right. 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 point.

the u.s. does commercial insurance, and over time to get broader access and you get patients paying a lower price. if you just take our leading diabetes product in the u.s. since launch in 2018, the price we get after rebates, discounts, etc., is some 40% lower than when we launched. that is often not mentioned in the political debate, the list price is mentioned which is not actually what we booked in our account. francine: the u.s. is such a large market. would you ever delist or change headquarters to the u.s.? lars: that is unlikely. we are controlled by a foundation that is anchored in denmark. we have a lot of, say, 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 is much as a danish company. but the corporate headquarters is based in denmark for the foreseeable future. francine: you think of denmark, and really now you think of novo because of the size of revenues, which is i think bigger than gdp. is that uncomfortable? lars: i think maybe the perspective should be corrected a bit. this comparison about our market cap with gdp. we all know that gdp is an economic flow matrix, and the market cap is the total value of the company. i'm sure if we compare the market cap of novo nordisk with everything in denmark we would be tiny. of course, there's also the point that with our expansions, our more than 30,000 employees in denmark, huge capex investment we are fueling the , gdp growth. you know, we take that quite

seriously. the jobs we create i don't think will disappear again. now we talk about expanding in the u.s. it does not come in the shape or form of moving activities from denmark to the u.s. it is growth in the u.s. we will be careful and respectful in how we grow so we can do that in a sustainable way. francine: that means also increasing supply with new factories? lars: yeah, we have made huge investment decisions and these are billion-dollar commitments per year. it takes four or five years to build some of these facilities. the work started years back. we have more and more lines kicking in on an ongoing basis, but some of them will also be kicking in in the future. francine: are you also looking for acquisitions? lars: yes, we are.

we are in the unique situation that most of the products we have came from our in-house r&d efforts, which is a bit unusual compared to some of our peers. we expect to carry on with that, but we can also see that we can complement that with some acquisitions. typically, it will be early stage biotech where they have great science. we have disease understanding and we have the infrastructure, so we can express that science in a better way than they can do on their own. so merging makes a perfect marriage, and the some of the parts is bigger than what it can do on their own. francine: are pharma companies having a harder time after covid? there seems to have been an explosion of not trusting pharmaceutical companies. even vaccines are being questioned. have you felt any backlash? lars: yes, and to me, that is a really sad situation to be in

because had it not been for some of the very innovative small biotechs who came up and then teaming up with some of the largest forces of our industry to in record time get approval in scaling manufacturing, i think the world would look much different today. i respect there are some who do not like vaccines, but the majority of us had a number of shots, and that led to a lot of debate about if patents are really needed. unless we have an ability to patent innovation, there's not going to be innovation, so there will be no new products. i think there is something about equality, how we distribute products. and honestly, i think a lot of the rich countries ended up grabbing products for their own population at the expense of some of the developing countries

who did not get access. that leads to debate over if ip is the right way to go. that, for me, is the wrong discussion. we have to figure out how we can show solidarity in a way where we actually acknowledge the whole world needs to benefit in a fair way. francine: coming up, lars fruergaard jorgensen tells me about his leadership style at the helm of europe's most valuable company. ♪

francine: the market value of novo nordisk is bigger than the danish economy and its philanthropic foundation is now the world's largest with more than double the assets of the gates foundation. i asked lars fruergaard jorgensen how he handles the company's success and his approach to corporate culture. are you enjoying success, or with it does it also bring a lot of responsibility? lars: i took over at a time when the share price had just been cut by 40%. we were in no growth, and it is much harder to invest in the business, do things you want to do compared to what the opportunities are today. so i enjoy that, but obviously, it also comes with many challenges about how to sustain

the company. francine: what kind of leader are you, or what kind of leader would your employees say you are? lars: well, you should ask them. i hope they would say that i'm authentic and relatively easy to read. i would also hope they say that i'm curious, because i'm not a specialist in anything, but i have found that there has not been yet a problem in the company we could not solve if we actually mobilized the right people. i'm born with a big nose and big ears, and i use the attribute of that each and every day to collect opinions from the company. then it is my role to combine it into an opinion together with my team and make sure that 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. because if -- for example, when covid-19 arrived, we decided to close down the offices. we kept manufacturing running and we all went home. what do you need to do? you need to establish a crisis response team to deal with that. the first decision i made was i should not be part of that. francine: why? lars: 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 a bottleneck in the company, and the company will have lost its ceo. i asked our cfo to chair that, and then i could still be there for everybody. people would come to me and check in and i could try to get

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

organization with more than 60,000 people. francine: saturday mornings, i understand you have off. lars: yeah. saturday is always a day where i power down. i run at a relative high pace throughout the week, try to wrap things up, and saturday is a quiet day for me in terms of work. i start typically by playing tennis with my wife. we go for a swim all year-round. after that, have a nice lunch, and then i am onto a good trajectory for the weekend. then sunday, i try to prepare for the coming weeks, but through a weekend, i would send either no emails or very few emails because i want to drive a culture where all get an opportunity to spend the weekend as they fancy. i think what we do is so difficult and it takes so much creative thinking to succeed that if you are always on,

always busy, the bandwidth of your reflection is just too narrow. i generally believe that monday mornings i'm a better leader than i am, say, friday afternoon. i also take all my vacations and i generally believe, better ceo after vacation that i am before vacation. francine: what is the best piece of advice you have ever received and 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 than they believe themselves and 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.

the worst piece would be something that was influenced by, say, politics or spinning facts. i'm hyper allergic to politics and when you try to take advantage of a position. i have had one experience during my career where i gave my resignation because somebody, a close colleague actually completely twisted some facts. we had just agreed how to approach. then we met with our shared boss and my colleague just turned it around. i said ok. integrity is so holy for me that if people play tricks, you know, it's not my game. whatever. i said ok, i'm out of here. we sorted it out. i still stayed. so any advice that is not based on honesty, decency, and

following the facts i really have a hard time with. francine: thank you so much for your time today. lars: thank you. ♪ ♪♪ sandals jamaica sale is now on! with rates from $199 per person per night. visit sandals.com or call 1-800-sandals life's daily battles are not meant to be fought alone.

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