Money Talks: Why weight-loss drugs will reshape the world
Money Talks from The Economist
The Economist
4.4 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 18 April 2024
⏱️ 37 minutes
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Summary
More than 1bn people around the world are obese. That means there should be extraordinary demand for drugs to cure or mitigate the condition. Novo Nordisk is now Europe’s most valuable company and Eli Lilly’s market value has more than doubled. Both make the “miracle” drugs that can help people shed up to a fifth of their body weight. But these drugs promise to do more than boost drug companies’ profits. How will they reshape the economy?
Hosts: Alice Fulwood, Mike Bird and Tom Lee-Devlin. Guests: The Economist’s Georgia Banjo; pharmaceuticals analyst Michael Nedelcovych; and John Cawley, a professor of public policy and economics at Cornell University.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, this episode of Money Talks is available to listen to for free, but if you want to listen every |
| 0:06.2 | week, you'll need to be an Economist subscriber. |
| 0:09.2 | For full details, search online for Economist Podcasts. |
| 0:40.0 | The Economist. So when I went to Denmark in January. It was unusually cold even for Denmark. It was about minus 10 degrees. I brought my thickest jacket and it still wasn't really enough. |
| 0:46.0 | Georgia Banjo writes about health for the economist. |
| 0:49.6 | Kalenburg's a small town in the center of Denmark. It's home to around 16,000 people. |
| 0:57.8 | The high street is like any other high street, lots of new boutiques opening up, a craft beer shop, but the skyline really is |
| 1:06.3 | quite unusual because it's dominated by these huge factories. Many of those |
| 1:12.0 | factories are owned by the pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, the maker of |
| 1:16.4 | Zampik and Wegovi, two groundbreaking weight-loss drugs. |
| 1:20.9 | Novoordisk, which has now overtaken LVMH to become a Europe's most valuable company, |
| 1:26.0 | has had so much success making and selling these drugs |
| 1:30.0 | that it is now driving the Danish economy. |
| 1:38.8 | In the first half of 2022 to the first half of 2023, |
| 1:41.8 | the economy grew by 1.7%. Now without Novo Nordisk the country probably would have been in |
| 1:46.8 | recession and it's not just growth so we think that around 3% of Danes are employed by Novonordisk or in some way benefiting from the company. |
| 1:58.0 | Four and five buyers of these weight loss injections are American and they might be paying more than a thousand dollars |
| 2:04.8 | per month for the treatment. |
| 2:07.7 | Another thing that I think is quite incredible is the influence of America. |
| 2:12.4 | So the Danish cra is loosely pegged to the euro. |
| 2:16.0 | And essentially what's happened is that Novo Nordisk pulls in so many dollars |
| 2:22.0 | that the central bank has had to keep interest rates |
... |
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