By Stine Jacobsen and Louise Rasmussen
COPENHAGEN, Feb 20 (Reuters) – Novo Nordisk will nominate drug industry veterans Jan van de Winkel and Ramona Sequeira to its board of directors, the company said on Friday, in the first additions since a shake-up at the Danish obesity drugmaker last year.
Last year, Novo Nordisk and its majority shareholder, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, replaced the drugmaker’s CEO and overhauled the board, installing Lars Rebien Sorensen who also chairs the Foundation, as board chairman, giving him a powerful dual role.
Novo Nordisk also confirmed the nomination of Helena Saxon to the board, which was first announced last year. She sits on the board of fashion retailer H&M and was formerly a board member at Swedish drugmaker Sobi.
SHARE PRICE PLUNGE OVER TOUGH COMPETITION
The nominations mark a test of Sorensen’s promise to strengthen the board’s pharmaceutical and commercial expertise after his criticism that the previous board moved too slowly on U.S. market challenges.
Novo Nordisk, maker of Wegovy and Ozempic, faces mounting pressure in the obesity drug market, battling U.S. rival Eli Lilly as well as telehealth companies offering cheaper copycat versions of its weight-loss drugs, sending its shares down 49% in the last year.
Novo’s shares declined 1.1% by 1243 GMT on Friday.
Van de Winkel, co-founder and CEO of Denmark’s Genmab, was proposed for election at the annual general meeting due on March 26, Novo said in a statement.
At the same time it planned to elect Sequeira, a former head of the Global Portfolio Division of Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceutical where she worked for 10 years until 2025.
Sequeira previously worked at Eli Lilly in various leadership roles across Canada, Europe and the United States, Novo said.
A former Pfizer executive withdrew his board candidacy in November last year, citing personal grounds.
(Reporting by Stine Jacobsen and Louise Rasmussen, editing by Terje Solsvik, Mark Potter and Susan Fenton)
