The development of semaglutide, the key ingredient in the medicines, has also transformed their maker, Novo Nordisk, into Europe’s most valuable company, with profound implications for its home country of Denmark. Novo’s market capitalization of more than $570 billion is bigger than the Danish economy. Its philanthropic foundation is now the world’s largest, with assets twice those of the Gates Foundation. The drugmaker’s income tax bill in Denmark last year was $2.
And this week, following months of debate over rising public spending on Novo medication, the firm quietly reduced prices for Ozempic in Denmark by nearly a third. “A decade ago, people who came from Copenhagen would call Kalundborg ‘Novosibirsk,’ because it was far out in the middle of nowhere,” said Damm, who’s been in the job since 2010. “Today, it’s known as Novo City.”
The ties between Novo Nordisk and Absalon go beyond large checks. Novo offers student internships, hosts factory visits, donates equipment to the college, provides guest lecturers, and makes suggestions as to how the school’s curriculum could be optimized to better suit the company’s needs. Students, most from abroad, are drawn to Absalon’s biotech program because of the near-guarantee of a job at Novo or one of the town’s other industrial companies; many work part-time at Novo while studying.
Concerns over academic freedom and research priorities have grown alongside Novo’s funding footprint. Wiebke Marie Junk, an associate professor of political science at the University of Copenhagen who researches lobbying, said that the danger potentially posed by a large company like Novo is that its interests could overshadow or even compromise work on other subjects or views. “With these big investments in societal progress also come the ability to set the agenda,” she said.
Experts have warned that Denmark’s growing dependence on Novo makes it harder for elected officials and civil servants to contest conditions that benefit the company and its foundation. That can translate into delicate questions going unasked, said Ellersgaard, the researcher at Copenhagen Business School. By way of example, he cited lawmakers’ failure to challenge the foundation’s allocation of tax-free non-profit money into research that ultimately benefits Novo Nordisk.
Anders Kuhnau, chairman of Danish Regions, the body representing Denmark’s regional public health care authorities, worried about the spike during an interview with Danish national broadcaster DR, calling it “very large and surprising.” While the authors noted that Novo has “a limited significance” in terms of employment relative to production—the drugmaker has about 28,000 employees in Denmark—the report nevertheless sparked concern that the country was on a trajectory similar to Finland’s under Nokia.