How diet drug Wegovy has fattened Denmark's coffers

Kim Kardashian, Elon Musk and Jeremy Clarkson all rushed to try it - and now the success of Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen's drug has supercharged Danish GDP

- Chris Blackhurst

If Danes were given to superstition they would be waving every lucky charm going in the direction of Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen. More, they should be giving him daily thanks and checking on his health.

For Jorgensen, 56, has transformed their entire economy. It sounds bizarre, that one individual can account for so much – Denmark is a country after all of 6 million people with a land mass of 16,580 square miles, making it 130th in the world by size. Its capital, Copenhagen is one of the biggest cities in Europe.

One guy, come on. But it’s true. The balding, bespectacled, soberly dressed Jorgensen is chief executive of Novo Nordisk, the laboratory that has seen its two flagship products, Ozempic used to treat diabetes, and Wegovy, anti-obesity, take the world by storm. As a result, his company’s market capitalisation of 2.9 billion kroner (£330bn) has outgrown Denmark’s GDP of 2.8 billion kroner.

As of this week, Novo Nordisk became Europe’s largest listed company, overtaking the global luxury goods giant, LVMH, a position the French firm had held for more than two and a half years.

Over the first six months of this year, Danish GDP rose by 1.7 per cent. Strip out the contribution from Novo Nordisk, however, and it would have fallen by 0.3 per cent. “If Novo Nordisk hadn’t been there, there wouldn’t have been any growth,” said Las Olsen, chief economist at Danske Bank.

Not only that, Denmark is beating the rest. The country’s production is up 40 per cent since the beginning of the pandemic; the eurozone and US on the other hand are only now returning to pre-pandemic levels.

The whole nation, the world, are agog at the Novo Nordisk phenomenon.