Novo Nordisk

Founded in 1923, Novo Nordisk has become a global leader in healthcare. Employing more than 64,000 people across 80 global offices by 2023, the Danish pharmaceutical giant owes much of its enduring success to its financing and ownership structure – steward-ownership.

Novo Nordisk A/S, the operating company, is built around two distinct share classes: A shares and B shares. The A shares, which hold 75% of the voting rights but only 25% of the profit rights, are entirely owned by Novo Holding, which is 100% controlled by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. This gives the foundation full control over Novo Nordisk's strategic direction while ensuring that the company's operations remain aligned with its mission and immune to external market pressures. Meanwhile, the B shares – publicly traded on the stock market – represent 75% of the profit rights but only 25% of the voting rights. Investors in B shares can benefit financially from the company’s success, yet their influence over corporate governance remains limited. The B-Shares are dispersed widely among a large group of investors, making individual influence negligible. Also, acquiring a majority of these dispersed B-Shares is financially prohibitive, given Novo Nordisk's market valuation, and even if consolidated, they do not contain sufficient voting rights to alter the company’s governance significantly, or limit its autonomy. Additionally, the A shares held by Novo Holding cannot be divested, further safeguarding the foundation's control over Novo Nordisk. This structure allows the company to attract external investment through the B shares, without risking a shift away from its mission-driven focus. The profits generated by Novo Nordisk flow back to the foundation, which in turn funds grants and research in biomedicine and biotechnology, ensuring that the company's success directly benefits societal progress.