No mo Novo board

There’s boardroom drama—and then there’s your entire board of directors quitting all at once.

Today, all the independent directors of Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, including the board chair, announced they will resign in November due to a disagreement with the controlling foundation about the makeup of the firm going forward.

Shares of the Ozempic maker dropped 1.72% on the news.

What just happened? While we don’t know exactly what went down, something tells us this dispute was about more than just what flavor of Keurig pods were being stocked in the break room.

Reports vary, but it seems like the current board wasn’t in favor of a preplanned shakeup of the boardroom. In an investor call today, the foundation’s chair, Lars Rebien Sørensen, said, “It was impossible to reach an agreement between the views of the current board and the foundation board.” The foundation now proposes that Sørensen, who was previously the CEO of the company from 2000 to 2016, become the chair of the new board of directors.

Reuters reported that the foundation wanted faster decision-making from the board, and argued that the board failed to foresee the key market changes in the US weight-loss drug market.

The Novo Nordisk Foundation is planning to hold a general meeting of shareholders on Nov. 14, where a new slate of board members will be elected. But the outcome seems predetermined: The foundation owns 25% of the company’s shares and controls over 70% of the votes.

Novo’s GLP-1 struggles

Tension has been building for a reason: Novo’s had a rough 2025. Its stock has sunk 36.1% this year so far after blowing its lead on the GLP-1 race and announcing it had to conduct a sweeping layoff of 9,000 employees. In May, the board announced it was firing its previous CEO, Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen. Mike Doustdar, the new top dog, has only been at the company two months.

Meanwhile, Novo’s major competitor, Eli Lilly, has rolled out its own slate of GLP-1 drugs, gaining US market share and catching up with Novo. Now, the next battleground is weight-loss pills, which are set to be a huge market internationally.

Between the CEO, then employees, and now the entire board, there’s not much left to shake up at Novo Nordisk.—LB