Novo Nordisk will replace his Chief Executive, Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen, the company Announced on FridayWith reference to a sharp fall in his share price that resulted from an increased competition for its popular weight loss medicine.
The Danish drug maker said it was looking for a new Chief Executive to quickly replace Mr Jorgensen, who led Novo Nordisk for eight years.
The movement reflects a remarkable fall in the fortune for the maker of one of the most famous medicines in the world, which is sold as Ozempic for diabetes and Wegovy for obesity. The shares of the company have fallen by 50 percent in the past year.
The sale of that medicine created tree times for Novo Nordisk. In 2023, the extraordinary success of the company requested The Danish Central Bank to keep the interest rates lower than usual. For more than a year, the market value of Novo Nordisk exceeded the entire gross domestic product of Denmark.
But investors have acidified the company because it has to do with more and more fierce competition. Lower copycat versions of weight loss medicines made by a process known as composing were cut in the sale of Novo Nordisk. Even more harmful was competition from Eli Lilly, the creator of the medicine that is sold as Mounjaro and Zepbound.
Novo Nordisk had a lead and won approval to market his medicine for obesity more than two years before Eli Lilly. But Novo Nordisk quickly lost market share to his competitor: American patients have filled more recipes for Zepbound this year than for Wegovy, and the gap has grown, according to the industrial data provider IQVIA.
Eli Lilly also develops new weight loss medicines, including A daily pillWho are expected to set up years of blockbuster sales for the company. Novo Nordisk has a blurry path ahead.
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