Novo Nordisk A/S is a Danish multinational pharmaceutical company headquartered in Bagsværd. Novo Nordisk is controlled by majority shareholder Novo Holdings A/S (wholly owned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation) which holds approximately 28.1% of its shares and a majority (77.1%) of its voting shares. Novo Nordisk manufactures and markets pharmaceutical products and services, specifically diabetes and obesity medications and devices. Novo Nordisk employs more than 48,000 people globally, and markets its products in 168 countries. The corporation was created in 1989, through a merger of two Danish companies, which date back to the 1920s. Novo Nordisk is a full member of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA). The company was ranked 25th among Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2010, and subsequently ranked 72nd in 2014 and 73rd in 2017. In January 2012, Novo Nordisk was named the most sustainable company in the world by the business magazine Corporate Knights, while spin-off company Novozymes was named fourth. It is a leader in the FTSE4Good Index, and the only European company in the top ten. Novo Nordisk is the largest pharmaceutical company in Denmark. Novo Nordisk's market capitalization exceeded the GDP of Denmark's domestic economy in 2023, and it is the highest valued company in Europe. Net sales in 2024 were US$42.121 billion.
History Novo Nordisk traces its origins to the 1920s with the founding of Nordisk Insulin Laboratorium and Novo Terapeutisk Laboratorium.
1922–1925
August Krogh and his wife Marie became interested in insulin upon hearing about it while on an American lecture tour in 1923; they modified their itinerary to meet with insulin discoverers Frederick Banting, John Macleod, Charles Best, and James Collip. August Krogh received permission to produce insulin in Denmark; Krogh and Hans Christian Hagedorn, with funding and facilities support from August Kongsted, began experimenting with means of extracting and purifying insulin from fish and rabbit pancreases. Known as the Insulin Laboratory, the research and production arm was operated as a unit of Kongsted's pharmaceutical company, Løvens Kemiske Fabrik. Kongsted rented a factory in Emdrup, Denmark, in late 1923 to help meet the demand for insulin. The Insulin Laboratory and the factory were spun off into a new company, Nordisk Insulin Laboratorium, in July 1924. The company was founded with an associated foundation and the three men served as the board of directors for both, with the foundation board membership barring them from profiting on the sale of insulin. The foundation and Nordisk Insulin signed articles of association in 1926 and the foundation received tax-exempt status by royal decree in January 1927. In 1925, brothers Harald and Thorvald Pedersen, who were former employees of Nordisk, formed their own company, Novo Terapeutisk Laboratorium. Novo and Nordisk competed until they merged in 1989 to become Novo Nordisk A/S.
1982–1994 The company established its presence in the US in 1982 via a joint venture with Squibb Corporation and Canada in 1984. In 1985, the company introduced the first insulin pen device called Novopen. In 1989, Novo Industri A/S (Novo Terapeutisk Laboratorium) and Nordisk Gentofte A/S (Nordisk Insulinlaboratorium) merged to become Novo Nordisk A/S, the world's largest producer of insulin with headquarters in Bagsværd, Copenhagen. In 1991, Novo Nordisk Engineering (now NNE A/S) demerged after working as in-house consultants at Novo Nordisk for years, to provide standard engineering services (end-to-end engineering) to pharma manufacturing companies. In 1994, Novo Nordisk's existing information technology units was spun out as NNIT A/S. The company was converted into a wholly owned aktieselskab in 2004 In March 2015, NNIT was floated on the Nasdaq Nordic.
2000–2018 Novo's enzymes business, Novozymes A/S, was spun-out in 2000. Novo acquired Xellia for $700 million in 2013. The same year, Novo Nordisk USA moved into new headquarters offices in Plainsboro Township, New Jersey, by way of extensively renovating abandoned premises. This action served to consolidate several facilities that the company had previously had in Plainsboro. In 2015, the company announced it would collaborate with Ablynx, using its nanobody technology to develop at least one new drug candidate. In January 2018, Reuters reported that Novo had offered to acquire Ablynx for $3.1 billion - having made an unreported offer in mid-December for the company. However, the Ablynx board rejected this offer the same day, explaining that the price undervalued the business. Ultimately Novo lost out to Sanofi who bid $4.8 billion. Later, in the same year, the company announced it would acquire Ziylo for around $800 million.
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