Wegovy maker Novo Nordisk’s chair and six other board members step down

The chair of Wegovy maker Novo Nordisk, Helge Lund, and six other board members are stepping down in a surprise shake-up, after a row with the company’s majority shareholder.

The Danish manufacturer of the blockbuster anti-obesity jab, and the diabetes drug Ozempic, said Lund, the vice-chair, Henrik Poulsen, and five independent board members would quit at an extraordinary meeting on 14 November.

The move comes after Novo Nordisk ousted its chief executive, Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, in May.

The pharmaceutical firm has been battling a slowing rate of profit growth and a drop in its share price, after losing ground to its US rival Eli Lilly, which makes the Mounjaro and Zepbound injections. Clinical studies have shown that Mounjaro is more effective in causing weight loss than Wegovy.

Lund said the board had been unable to reach agreement with the drugmaker’s largest shareholder, Novo Nordisk Foundation, which wanted “a more extensive reconfiguration” of the board.

This is Lund’s second corporate departure this year – in April, he agreed to step down as the chair of UK energy company BP amid shareholder opposition to its green energy plans.

Novo Nordisk’s share price fell by 1.57% in Copenhagen on Tuesday.

The foundation is putting five candidates forward for the board, including Lars Rebien Sørensen as chair, and will propose two more at the annual meeting in March. Sørensen is the foundation’s chair and joined the company’s board as an observer after Jørgensen was ousted.

Sørensen, who ran the drugmaker as chief executive before Jørgensen, said the foundation fully supported the new chief executive, Mike Doustdar, and the “transformation” plans unveiled last month, including 9,000 job cuts, amounting to 11% of its workforce.

The foundation said Sørensen would serve as chair for two to three years to support the drugmaker’s new management in “implementing its transformation plans and regaining the company’s growth momentum” and to then find a new chair who can lead the company into the 2030s.