chief executive lars fruergaard jorgensen says obesity is a disease and thinks the company will learn from its growing number of patients. lars: when i ask the scientists, they will tell you it is chronic treatment. my personal view is that we will also learn that patients are much different, and there will be different avenues, so, we will have to build a portfolio of interventions. francine: on this episode of "leaders with lacqua," i travel to the firm's headquarters in copenhagen, denmark. i ask lars fruergaard jorgensen 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: francine, thanks for having me. francine: after decades of research, basically novo finds a molecule that changes everything in terms of weight loss drugs. were you taken by surprise at the appetite actually 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 wit

i asked chief executive lars fruergaard jorgensen about regulatory pressures and future growth. do you think about pricing? you must have had some difficult questions from government, but also, this goes back to inflation. 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 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, finding that cost in the health care system is linked to chronic care, and we have portfolio products that are addressing some of the chronic diseases of our day and age. diabetes, obesity, and comorbidity is what we know with there are protections that say but 2025, the world obesity organization predicts that across 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 dur