Dive Brief:
- Bloomberg reports that the board of Danish drug giant Novo Nordisk is already searching for a successor to CEO Lars Rebien Sørensen. Sørensen has served as CEO since the fall of 2000 and been with the company for 32 years.
- Sørensen has overseen tremendous growth during his 14-year tenure as Novo's chief. In fact, the company's stock returned approximately 17% per year, including dividends, over that timeframe.
- Sørensen's contract doesn't expire until 2019, but he could reportedly step down as soon as next year, once a successor is identified.
Dive Insight:
One thing is clear: whoever replaces Sørensen will have some very big shoes to fill. Under his leadership, Novo's market value has risen to nearly $115 billion. As BioPharma Dive has previously reported, he was ranked the sixth best-performing CEO in the world by the Harvard Business Review, and the third best pharma CEO. Novo is known in particular for its world-leading diabetes franchise.
But the board isn't sweating finding a replacement, saying that management at Novo has always been a transparent, team effort, according to Bloomberg. Novo did promote Chief Operating Officer Kaare Schultz in January to a company president, stoking some speculation that he could be towards the top of a search committee's list.