Novo Nordisk headquarters.
Novo Nordisk — the Danish drug manufacturer that makes Wegovy — today announced that Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, its CEO, is stepping down from the CEO post.
The company announced that it made the move because of "recent market challenges" and is conducting a search for Jørgensen's successor.
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Lars Rebien Sørensen, chair of the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the nonprofit organization that controls the drug manufacturer, will join the drug manufacturer's board as an observer, Novo Nordisk said.
Jørgensen has been Novo Nordisk's CEO for eight years. He led the company as it built big markets for use of injectable GLP-1 agonist drugs to control diabetes and obesity.
The company announced earlier this month that it has filed for U.S. approval for the ability to sell semaglutide, the active ingredient in the Wegovy weight-loss drug, in a pill.
CVS Caremark, the biggest U.S. pharmacy benefit manager, decided to highlight Wegovy as the preferred anti-obesity GLP-1 agonist on its standard formularies, or lists of covered drugs.
David Joyner, a CVS executive, testified at a congressional hearing that the United States alone could end up spending $1.2 trillion on GLP-1 agonists each year if every adult who could benefit from taking the drugs received them.
But the price of the company's shares has fallen by 50% over the past year, to about $66, in part because of investors' concerns about cost-cutting pressure and in part because of concerns about possible competition from tirzepatide, a drug produced by Eli Lilly that is both a GLP-1 agonist and a GIP receptor agonist.
Earlier this week, UnitedHealth, a U.S. health care giant, Andrew Witty, would be leaving the CEO post there and would be replaced by Stephen Hemsley, the UnitedHealth chairman, who had previously served as the UnitedHealth CEO.
The move at UnitedHealth was prompted by the company's falling stock price. The company has faced resistance to its Medicare Advantage plan business strategies and Optum Rx PBM strategies. It also has faced cost-cutting pressure from federal Medicare program managers.
Related: UnitedHealth CEO steps down for 'personal reasons,'
In April, Tony Esposito, the CEO of Crozer Health, a struggling Philadelphia-area health system, left that organization as it was preparing to shut down its operations.
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Allison Bell
Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.
