How a Danish businessman made his country fat on the success of slimming ‘wonder-drug’ Wegovy

If Danes were given to superstition they would be waving every lucky charm going in the direction of Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen. More, they should be giving him daily thanks and checking on his health.

For Jorgensen, 56, has transformed their entire economy. It sounds bizarre, that one individual can account for so much – Denmark is a country after all of six million people with a land mass of 16,580 square miles, making it 130th in the world by size. Its capital, Copenhagen is one of the biggest cities in Europe.

One guy, come on. But it’s true. The balding, bespectacled, soberly dressed Jorgensen is chief executive of Novo Nordisk, the laboratory that has seen its two flagship products, Ozempic used to treat diabetes, and Wegovy, anti-obesity, take the world by storm. As a result, his company’s market capitalisation of 2.9 billion kroner (over €400bn) has outgrown Denmark’s GDP of 2.8 billion kroner.

As of this week, Novo Nordisk became Europe’s largest listed company, overtaking the global luxury goods giant, LVMH, a position the French firm had held for more than two and a half years.

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Over the first six months of this year, Danish GDP rose by 1.7 per cent. Strip out the contribution from Novo Nordisk, however, and it would have fallen by 0.3 per cent.

“If Novo Nordisk hadn’t been there, there wouldn’t have been any growth,” said Las Olsen, chief economist at Danske Bank.

Not only that, Denmark is beating the rest. The country’s production is up 40 per cent since the beginning of the pandemic; the eurozone and US on the other hand are only now returning to pre-pandemic levels.

The whole nation, the world, are agog at the Novo Nordisk phenomenon.

It’s all because Jorgensen’s lab, in the leafy, middle-class suburb of Bagsvaerd, northwest of Copenhagen, is the only US officially approved manufacturer of a blockbuster drug called semaglutide. That’s the active ingredient of Ozempic, an effective treatment for type 2 diabetes, made by Novo Nordisk since 2017. Latterly, it was noticed that semaglutide produces the same sensation as a hormone, GLP-1, the one that makes us feel full after a meal. Suddenly, the Danish firm had a world-conquering weight-loss drug, Wegovy, in its catalogue.

Celebrities, among them Elon Musk, Jeremy Clarkson, Kim Kardashian, all rushed to try it. Demand rocketed. Then, Jorgensen and his colleagues declared that Wegovy could reduce the risk of  heart attacks and strokes by 20 per cent. Cue another upward tick in sales.

As Novo Nordisk has made its discoveries, so has it struggled to keep pace with a clamouring worldwide public. What was once a 100-year-old small research facility has spawned a huge, space-age headquarters that towers over the surrounding landscape. A tiny workforce has also grown exponentially, so today Novo Nordisk employs 22,000 people in Denmark and 55,000 worldwide. Last week it added another 700.

The company has become Denmark. All Danish pensions are tied up in its fortunes; the central bank is keeping interest rates down because investors in shares in Novo Nordisk, which is quoted in krone, are pushing up the price of the country’s currency; it’s likely that the success of the pharma producer has been responsible for keeping Denmark away from recession.

But the rush for Wegovy, which has led to non-diabetes sufferers attempting to snap up stocks of Ozempic, may not even properly have taken off. A billion people are obese; so far, Novo Nordisk has only dipped its toe into a potentially colossal market.

Anyone, though, expecting to see its employees high-fiving in the street, popping champagne, driving around in supercars and living in gated mansions, will be disappointed. This is Denmark, where everything, including the success of a company that is smashing historic records on an almost daily basis, remains deliberately understated.

There is another reason for the absence of showy consumption. The nearest comparison to Novo Nordisk’s rise and dominance of its local economy was Nokia and Finland – another Nordic nation as it happens.

At one time, Nokia was the only mobile phone to have, and Finland benefited as a result. Steve Jobs and Apple, however, had other ideas, and their iPhone soon put paid to Nokia, and to Finland’s presence in the economic top flight.

Other pharma-makers, already established giants, are sprinting to come up with similar products. Eli Lilly and Pfizer are in a breakaway from the chasing pack. It may be a matter of when, not if, they pull alongside and overtake Novo Nordisk.

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Until then, the Danish brand has the lead, and besides, world demand is so overwhelming that there is bound to be room for more than one player. The Canadian investment bank BMO reckons the anti-obesity market could be worth a staggering $130bn to $140bn a year.

There is dark talk of semaglutides encouraging suicide, a possible link under exploration by the European Medicines Agency. Equally, heavily in Novo Nordisk’s favour, there is mounting speculation its medicines may have a significant role to play in combating other serious complaints, including cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease and Alzheimer’s.

Jorgensen is not another Musk or Jeff Bezos. He does not possess a superyacht but likes to go kayaking on a lake near his home. He grew up on his family’s farm in rural Jutland, in Denmark.

He studied finance and business, and joined Novo Nordisk on its graduate trainee scheme in 1991. He worked his way around the company, posted to the US, Japan and Netherlands, and across different departments, including technology and business development. He met his wife, a fellow Novo Nordisk staffer, in the process. They have two adult children.

At 33, he was made interim head of corporate finance. That was followed by his appointment as chief financial officer and then CEO. It was Jorgensen who took the decision, shortly after he landed the top job, to authorise an expensive trial to show whether Wegovy could alleviate the likelihood of heart attacks and strokes. The study cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but Jorgensen’s boldness was vindicated.

That’s not to say he is a loud, brash person. The Danish government has nothing to fear from challenges in the media from the country’s most important businessperson. That’s not his style. Just as he quietly assumed responsibility back on the Jutland farm for looking after animals, so too has he kept his head down with shouldering the burden of running Novo Nordisk.

He’s not seeking global stardom for himself. He eschews glamour. He’s not wishing to be a key influencer at Davos or via TED talks, not anxious to be securing spots on celebrity chat shows – any of which he could handle easily if he was so inclined.

His approach is one of quiet command, to hear the arguments – he’s a good listener – and to give his reasoning, without histrionics and raising his voice. He’s a strong believer in the power of moving forward collectively.

He is, though, a target for Denmark’s left, who are pressuring him to lower the prices of Ozempic and Wegovy. Seeing as he cannot keep up with the appetite for them anyway, and is having to open more factories, it’s hard to see what would be gained – he could reduce the charges and hit profits and invest in new production lines, and still fail to get the drugs to poorer buyers.

Ozempic and Wegovy are sweeping all before them but their manufacturer, Novo Nordisk, is still little known, staying in the background. Its boss, too, prefers to keep out of the limelight. Typical Danes, in other words.