it has the Ring of a Hands Christian Anderson fairy tale if a supremely ironic one tiny Denmark is home to 6 million of the world’s wealthiest and healthiest people all those musely munching cyclists even their letter O’s sometimes come slashed in half but Denmark is also home to what is suddenly Europe’s largest company Novo Nordisk a pharmaceutical firm with a market cap of a half trillion dollars thanks to products that wait for it combat obesity novo’s drugs OIC and wovi have slimmed down Hollywood stars in millions of non-celebrities worldwide well adding great heft to Denmark’s economy we traveled to the Baltic to see how a country with a slender ego is coping with this most unlikely injection of fantastic wealth the story will continue in a moment just another copen commuter ped off to work in the morning lot Baron nson goes unnoticed first on the train then pep in her step walking from the station to the office she shares with two others understating matters as one does in Denmark you’d never know from appearances that she is the scientist whose research at noo Nordisk led to perhaps the most revolutionary drug this Century I’m so grateful uh I would always just been a nerdy little scientist uh who kind of found home here in this company for 35 years is that really your sense of self still these days I’m proud but I’m also humble and really very focused on the fact that it was uh it was a team it was a team effort modesty aside her discoveries helped create OIC and wovi which not only treat type 2 diabetes and obesity but are now approved for treating cardiovascular disease as well this of course has made her a billion not so fast and you know I’m actually not super interested in actually having um a whole lot of uh money I don’t think that uh it doesn’t look like it’s making people happy right money is not something that’s pay my taxes I like the society that we live in I like that there’s equal access to to healthcare I really like that long as you brought it up let’s get this out of the way there is very little rotten in the state of Denmark this is the land that gave us Lego province of pedaling all fishing nets and safety nets and today noo nordis success in the spike in demand for OIC is fattening the country’s economy creating thousands of jobs bolstering National pension plans keeping morgage rates low Novo now has a market cap larger than the entire country’s GDP oh giving rise to a new national emblem drugs so popular they’ve become embedded in pop culture at least in the US where the company advertises liberally including on this broadcast but in Denmark pharmaceutical advertising is illegal this is very very unfamiliar for Danish persons this kind of uh advertisement they wouldn’t like it it’s it’s not very Danish Peter Lun Madson is a celebrated n ologist and writer and like most Danes delighted that America’s demand for noo Nordisk drugs is dead Mark’s gain help us understand where this company fits in the Danish national Consciousness right now Novo is a part of Denmark because we are a small country and finally we have a big company in Europe much bigger than anything the swedes have so so we like that notion you can hold us over the swedes yes yes because they’ve always had cars and airplanes and big companies but now we have Novo take that here yes yes yes it’s the first time danishness courses through Novo nordisk’s bloodstream the company was founded in the early 1920s by August Crow a Nobel laurate and his wife Marie a doctor their motivation wasn’t Financial it was personal Marie was diagnosed with diabetes at the time a death sense this drug that we’re seeing right here helped save the life of Marie it did she was very discreet about it she did not want anybody to know that she was diabetic because Marie was a doctor she was not a patient Hana syck a Danish journalist has written two books about Novo Nordisk and the crows we spoke to her in a lecture theater in what was the Danish medical school where the crows first met is it fair to say that this origin story of Nova nordis starts as a as a love story it is absolutely fair to say he was teaching her as she was a medic student he fell in love with her right away when in 1922 they heard that Canadian scientists had stumbled upon a miracle cure for diabetes insulin they traveled to Toronto and came home with the rights to manufacture the drug in Scandinavia sounds very nice of the Canadian scientists did they ask for anything else in in return they asked that nobody should person should profit from it it should be to the benefit of humanity that was the the price you can say it was a way to get this life-saving drug out in the world fast back in Denmark within months they set up the Nordisk insulin company in keeping with their agreement they established a nonprofit Foundation which today controls 77% of the company’s voting shares so the agreement was that if there were revenues and proceed from the the sales of of insulin here in Scandinavia it should be returned to society in the form of support for Research into physiology and Medicine Matt krro guard is the foundation’s CEO today it is the largest philanthropic organization in the world bigger than the Gates Foundation this is actually a 384 plate that Karen has there you know while Nova Nordisk always focused on Diabetes drugs it did Branch out Beyond medicine in the late 80s young L nson was assigned to the enzyme team which had the noble goal of making sure Reds and whites didn’t run in the wash you started with laundry detergent yes I did yeah it’s the same story right of just wanting to make a product that’s useful in the early ’90s she came across a new study about a naturally occurring gut hormone glp1 that lowered blood sugar levels and suppressed appetite she thought if it could be harnessed into a drug it could revolutionize treatment for diabetes and obesity she went to her boss novo’s head of research Matt’s krogg guard yes the same guy who now heads the foundation what do you remember about her she was the first one to March into my office with red hair and very fired up showing me a publication that was not even published yet she was talking very agitatedly about this and I was getting excited I understand you also had to convince Senior Management about obesity and what it was that this wasn’t a behavioral Choice necessarily they felt just go up on a bike do some jogging do some biking just get off the couch and exercise yeah and I started trying to convince them that it’s not getting on the bike if you’re genetically predisposed living in the environment we are in today you’re at very high risk and something should be done about that for the next 20 years they worked on that glp1 molecule before OIC finally made it to Market as a type 2 diabetes drug it took another four years for wovi to be approved for weight loss it turned noo Nordisk from Niche player to a company bigger than cocacola and Proctor and Gamble the CEO is Lars ferard jurgenson so typically Danish his compensation package of $10 million is dwarfed by his us counterparts his office is a co-working space at top novo’s Copenhagen headquarters designed in the shape of an insulin molecule so your next building needs to be the molecule of an anti-obesity Drive yes it should jurgenson is only the fifth chief executive since the company was founded ask him about the weight of the job and no CEO God complex here he defaults to the company Mantra the novo nordis way so the nor noric way is the basic thinking of our Founders and and key elements linked to how we treat each other how we collaborate and that’s about being open and honest it’s all about being accountable this sounds almost like uh a cult a religious movement and not so much a pharmaceutical firm I think the values are based on ordinary human decent values you appreciate you’re not sounding very much like an American CEO right now well um I think I’m very grounded as an individual my upbringing has has given me a lot of say ground and in Denmark Chief executives are expected to be grounded in Denmark it’s very unrespectable to flash their money rich people in Denmark they tend to buy cheaper cars in order to stay out of trouble so the the CEO of n Nordisk if if he’s driving around Copenhagen in a Ferrari or a limousine how how does that play poorly but the other way around if if he was driving around in a cheap car that would be a very good thing for him oh I like his driving such a car he’s he’s a true D but for all of noo nordisk’s Danish high-mindedness there is a growing chorus of complaint in America stop ripping us off as an avowed socialist Bernie Sanders may find plenty to like about Denmark but at a Senate Hearing in September Sanders excoriated Jorgenson over allegations of price gouging the CEO told the committee what he told us the benefits of novo’s drugs to Global health will ultimately save trillions of dollars and if anything is to blame for the high prices it’s the fractured US Health Care System what is the response to the skeptical American that says come on this is big Pharma this pricing is predatory they’re making money off people with with health problems this is not Utopia this is just another big greedy business of course it’s it’s greedy you have to compete in the world as it is and I don’t think that Nova Nordisk has all these values just to be nice they have it because it’s good business they’re not blind to capitalism that there there will be Rivals absolutely not they capitalists at heart in this but you can be a capitalist with great values and to keep up with the global demand for noo drugs less than 1% of sales come from inside Denmark the company is sinking billions into new plants worldwide and just a few miles down the road from the cranes in the Danish Countryside sits this quintessential Scandinavian institution half boarding school half summer camp and state subsidized of course it’s a health facility for the small portion of Danes who are diagnosed with obesity recently enrollment has declined almost half and some of the empty beds are being filled by get this newly recruited Novo employees as they try to find permanent housing that’s a way we can gain a little money you know now we have less students so bit of an irony right yeah it is Lars yinson has been a therapist and life coach here for 20 years when you heard these drugs were coming on the market from Denmark did did you think oh boy this this could impact us yes we did so if somebody says I I’m just going to to take these anti-obesity drugs rather than come here what would you tell them I would tell them to think about what made you eat too much in the first place what was that about why you need to take medicine and for some people it would be a perfect solution no doubt about that but for many people it will not be because they still have the problem the Obesity is just a symptom that this goes Way Beyond what the scale says exactly on a more macro level Novo nist’s runaway success is beginning to shrink entire sectors of the global economy fast food big box stores even Crispy Cream they’re already tightening their belts in a universe where people are less hungry still there are competitors and counterfeits out there and Chinese companies are already in clinical trials for generics but for now the world’s weight Surplus Remains The Dan and Peter Lun madson’s economic surplus do you own NOA nor stock yes I have for many years like many other people in Denmark how are you feeling about your investment everybody has the feeling that this will go on forever and they are very uh very uh yes happy
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