When the CEO of a major pharmaceutical company steps down, the transition often comes at a time of reinvention. While many factors play into a decision to shuffle the C-suite, Big Pharma has seen turnover in the last few years as a result of looming patent cliffs, shifting competitive landscapes or poor financial performance.
Novo Nordisk announced last week that CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen would step down from the Danish drugmaker, which is conducting a search for his replacement. With years of outsized performance around the company’s GLP-1 diabetes and weight loss medications Ozempic and Wegovy, Jørgensen’s ouster came as a surprise.
But that success became less potent compared to rival drugmaker Eli Lilly, whose own GLP-1 drugs, despite being second to market, have begun to outshine Novo’s first-mover status….