Novo Nordisk named Maziar Mike Doustdar as its new chief executive today, relying on an experienced company insider to revive sales and a share price hit by worries the maker of weight-loss drug Wegovy is falling behind in a race it started.
The appointment comes after the abrupt removal in May of CEO Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen by Novo and the Novo Nordisk Foundation – the Danish company’s controlling shareholder, and follows a growth warning earlier today.
Shares in Novo Nordisk were down by around 16% following the profit warning and plummeted further following the CEO announcement.
Shares fell as much as 29.8% at one stage today, wiping over €80 billion ff its market value, though later recovered some ground to be down 20%.
Doustdar, an Iranian-born, Austrian national, who grew up in the USs, joined Novo in 1992 and will take on the new role on August 7.
Doustdar currently serves as vice president for international operations, a role he took after leading the company’s businesses first in the Middle East and then in Southeast Asia, Novo said.
Some analysts and investors had argued that Novo should select an American, or a person with extensive experience working in the US as its next CEO. Novo has lost its first-mover advantage in the US this year to US rival Eli Lilly.
Novo’s profit warning came on rising competition and copycat versions of its weight-loss drug that hurt sales this year, but a crackdown on these so-called compounded versions of Wegovy in May could improve the situation.
The new chief executive’s most urgent challenge, according to investors and analysts, is to revive Novo’s performance in the US, the largest market by far for weight-loss drugs and where they are most profitable.
Novo launched its weight-loss drug Wegovy nearly two and a half years before US rival Eli Lilly’s Zepbound. But Zepbound prescriptions surpassed those of Wegovy this year by more than 100,000 a week.
The appointment comes at a challenging time for the global pharmaceutical industry as US President Donald Trump threatens to impose tariffs on imports and calls on drugmakers to lower their US prescription prices.
Weight-loss drug boom
Jorgensen led Novo through a period of meteoric growth as it led the weight-loss drug boom, becoming Europe’s most valuable listed company following the launch of Wegovy in 2021.
At its peak in June 2024 Novo was worth as much as $615 billion.
But Novo shares have plunged since then on investor concerns about the company’s experimental drug pipeline and its ability to navigate challenges in the US market, such as the threat to its sales from compounded copies of Wegovy and Lilly’s Zepbound.
