Ozempic Is a Hit. So Why Is the Drugmaker’s CEO Out?

The Journal.

The Wall Street Journal

Daily News, Business News, News

4.2 • 5.3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Blockbuster drugs. Rising profits. Strong sales. And yet, Novo Nordisk, the Danish company behind the GLP-1 drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, made a surprising move last week: It pushed out its CEO. WSJ's Peter Loftus charts the rise of Ozempic and the fall of CEO Lars Jorgensen. Jessica Mendoza hosts. Further Listening: Trillion Dollar Shot Why WeightWatchers Wants in on Drugs Like Ozempic Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	In the world of Big Pharma, this is the sound of liquid gold.
0:14.9	An assembly line in Denmark fills glass vials with somaglite.
0:19.0	It's the active ingredient in the injectable drug
0:21.2	that's become a bona fide
0:22.5	cultural phenomenon.
0:28.3	Where would you say
0:32.6	Ozempic ranks
0:33.7	in terms of successful drugs that you've covered?
0:36.7	One of the most successful of all time.
0:40.6	It's up there from a financial perspective, but also just from a cultural impact perspective.
0:45.8	Right.
0:46.1	It's one of the biggest deals. That's rare.
0:48.9	Tell me about the company behind this blockbuster drug.
0:52.5	Well, a company is Novo Nordisk, which is based in Denmark,
0:56.0	and they've been around for about 100 years.
0:59.0	Most of that time, probably a lot of Americans never heard of it.
1:03.0	Over the last decade, our colleague Pete Loftus has watched
1:07.0	Novo Nordisk grow into a pharmaceutical juggernaut.
1:10.0	Novo is one of the a pharmaceutical juggernaut.
1:14.6	Novo is one of the most valuable companies in Europe by stock market capitalization,
1:19.0	thanks to the spectacular success of OZempic and its sister drug Wagovi.
1:26.5	Last year, their combined sales of just those two drugs were over $26 billion.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 8 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Wall Street Journal, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Wall Street Journal and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.