Hi everyone, I'm Nicola Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, and today I'm in really good company with Vass, Narasimann, the CEO of Novartis.

Voss has one of the most fascinating backgrounds in pharma. He is a trained physician who also worked in the front lines fighting tuberculosis and malaria in developing countries before rising to lead

one of the world-largest pharmaceutical companies. We own 2.3% of Novartis, and that's worth more than

$5 billion, roughly 10,000 Norwegian crowner per Norwegian citizens. So, Vals, big thanks for joining us.

Great to be here, Nikolai.

Just briefly to kick off,

for those who are not familiar with Novartis,

just what are your areas of focus?

Yeah, we're one of the largest biopharmaceutical companies in the world,

focused on innovative medicines in oncology, cardiovascular disease, neuroscience, and immunological diseases.

Very good, and we'll come back to many of those.

Now, you have a different background compared to many of the pharma CEOs. How do you think that has shaped your approach to leading Novartis?

Well, I think it's helped in many dimensions. I mean, coming from being a physician, coming from a scientific background, I'm definitely steeped in the R&D elements of the work we do.

So I'm always thinking about the medicine, how the medicines impact patients, very data-driven,

always thinking about how these medicines might fit into clinical practice.

And given that the core of what a biopharmaceutical company does is find breakthrough innovations

that matter for patients

in the long run. I think it's a really helpful background. I had to learn a lot about business.

I didn't go to business school. I had to learn all of the ins and outs of capital allocations and

balance sheets, P&Ls, running businesses. But I think the combination of a medical background and business background

has served me well. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Well, to be frank, business is not so difficult

compared to medicine. So I think you assumed another right things. Now, you were running the R&D

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