Novo Nordisk Organizational Structure

About the company

Novo Nordisk A/S is a Danish pharmaceutical company built on insulin and now defined by GLP-1 medicines for diabetes and obesity. It reported net sales of DKK 309,064 million for 2025 — roughly USD 48 billion — against an operating profit of DKK 127,658 million, and employed about 69,500 people worldwide at year end.

The company is itself a merger. Nordisk Insulinlaboratorium, founded in 1923 around the work of August Krogh, Marie Krogh and Hans Christian Hagedorn, and Novo Terapeutisk Laboratorium, started by the brothers Harald and Thorvald Pedersen, competed for six decades before combining as Novo Nordisk A/S in 1989. It is listed in Copenhagen and New York and run from Bagsværd, outside Copenhagen.

Its structure is worth studying for two reasons that pull against each other. The operating company is a plain, unusually flat functional organisation that any large manufacturer would recognise. Above it sits a control arrangement almost nothing else of this size shares: a charitable foundation that holds the majority of the votes and, on the evidence of 2025, is willing to use them.

Novo Nordisk A/S organizational chart

Novo Nordisk A/S's reporting structure as of 2026-08. Drag to pan, scroll to zoom — or open it in QueryChart and edit it as your own.

Eleven executives, a supervisory board above them, and a foundation holding the votes

The chart has one root and one layer. Maziar Mike Doustdar sits at the top as President and CEO, and the ten people beneath him are the entirety of Executive Management as Novo Nordisk publishes it: eight executive vice presidents and two senior vice presidents. The company names those eleven and nothing below them, which is why this diagram is deliberately two levels deep rather than padded out with middle managers nobody outside the company can verify.

The Board of Directors is absent from the tree on purpose. Denmark uses a two-tier model in which the board is entirely non-executive — the CEO holds no board seat and no executive sits on the board — so it supervises the company rather than managing it, and four of its twelve seats are filled by employee election under Danish co-determination rules. A second legal quirk sits inside Executive Management itself: only the CEO and the CFO are registered with the Danish Business Authority as statutory executive management, so the body that runs the company is larger than the body that legally binds it.

What the diagram cannot draw is the ownership above it. Novo Holdings A/S, wholly owned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, holds roughly 28% of the share capital and about 77% of the votes through the A and B share classes. It is a separate legal entity with its own management, which is why it is not a box on this chart — and it is also the reason the chart understates who decides. That gap between capital and votes was used bluntly in November 2025, when an extraordinary general meeting replaced seven sitting directors in a single sitting and installed a chair who also chairs the Foundation.

Below the CEO the cut is functional with one geographic exception. Commercial is split into exactly two units, US Operations and International Operations, while global brand, launch and portfolio decisions sit apart in Product & Portfolio Strategy, so the two operating units execute against a centrally set portfolio. Two more seats were redrawn within a year: Research & Early Development and Development were merged into a single R&D organisation in August 2025 under one executive who is also Chief Scientific Officer, and from 1 January 2026 the former Product Supply, Quality & IT area became CMC & Product Supply on one side and Quality, IT & Environmental Affairs on the other. All of it followed a September 2025 transformation programme that removed about 9,000 roles and flattened the layer immediately under Executive Management.

Key leadership roles

1. Maziar Mike Doustdar

   President and Chief Executive Officer — The single root of the operating chart; under the Danish two-tier model he holds no seat on the Board of Directors.

2. Karsten Munk Knudsen

   Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer — With the CEO, one of only two executives registered with the Danish Business Authority as statutory executive management.

3. Martin Holst Lange

   Executive Vice President, R&D and Chief Scientific Officer — Runs the single R&D organisation created in August 2025 by merging Research & Early Development with Development.

4. Hong Chow

   Executive Vice President, Product & Portfolio Strategy — Joined in February 2026; the Annual Report 2025 still names the previous holder of this seat and the handover is not documented publicly.

5. Jamey Millar

   Executive Vice President, US Operations — Also joined in February 2026, from the US payer side — the second commercially exposed seat filled from outside in the same month.

6. Emil Kongshøj Larsen

   Executive Vice President, International Operations — Owns every market outside the United States in a commercial organisation cut into just two geographies.

7. Kasper Bødker Mejlvang

   Executive Vice President, CMC & Product Supply — Seat created for 1 January 2026, carrying chemistry, manufacturing and controls plus the factory network.

8. Thilde Hummel Bøgebjerg

   Executive Vice President, Quality, IT & Environmental Affairs — The other half of that split, which keeps quality assurance outside the line accountable for output.

9. Tania Sabroe

   Executive Vice President, People, Organisation & Corporate Affairs — Combines the people function with corporate affairs in one seat rather than splitting HR from external relations.

10. John F. Kuckelman

    Senior Vice President, Group General Counsel — Legal, intellectual property and security; a senior vice president rather than an EVP, but a full member of Executive Management.

11. Elin Jäger

    Senior Vice President and Chief of Staff to the CEO — Drawn laterally off the CEO's line, as a chief-of-staff seat rather than a line organisation.

How this structure supports the business

Foundation control is what allows the operating structure to be as plain as it is. A listed company with no controlling shareholder is under standing pressure to rearrange itself around whatever the market currently rewards. Novo Nordisk can leave the shape alone for years and then change it deliberately, as it did across 2025, because the votes that would force the question sit with an owner whose mandate is a research mission rather than a holding period — which is also the structural reason a mid-sized Danish company could fund two decades of GLP-1 biology before it paid.

Cutting commercial into two geographies rather than by product puts the seam where the difficulty actually is. The United States is a distinct pricing, payer, compounding and litigation environment, and giving it a dedicated executive means US-specific decisions are made by someone accountable for them rather than escalated through a global sales function. International Operations then runs everywhere else against one centrally set portfolio, which is the job Product & Portfolio Strategy exists to hold.

Separating Quality, IT & Environmental Affairs from CMC & Product Supply is a regulatory design decision rather than an accident of headcount. In a GxP-regulated manufacturer the function that can stop a batch should not report to the function measured on shipping it, and drawing that as two seats at the same level makes the independence structural instead of cultural.

Advantages and disadvantages

Foundation control through Novo Holdings' roughly 77% of the votes lets the company fund decade-long research programmes and absorb bad quarters without activist pressure or takeover risk.

The same mechanism means the outside shareholders who hold most of the capital cannot decide anything contested; the November 2025 extraordinary general meeting removed seven directors at once and left the board short of the independence Danish governance recommendations expect.

Splitting commercial into US Operations and International Operations matches the real economics, where the US pricing, payer and litigation environment deserves its own executive rather than being a region inside a global sales function.

It concentrates a very large share of group revenue in one seat and creates a standing seam with Product & Portfolio Strategy, so launch sequencing and pricing disputes between the central portfolio and the country P&Ls have to travel to the CEO to be settled.

Merging Research & Early Development with Development under one EVP and Chief Scientific Officer removes a handoff that cost time at the discovery-to-clinic boundary and gives one person end-to-end accountability for pipeline throughput.

It also removes an internal check: early research and late development have different risk appetites, and a single owner of both loses the friction that used to make an early programme justify itself to a separate development organisation before advancing.

A flat eleven-person Executive Management, with the General Counsel and the Chief of Staff in the room, keeps decisions close to the CEO and made a transformation of roughly 9,000 roles executable inside a single quarter.

Ten direct reports is a wide span for a company of nearly 70,000 people, and because Novo Nordisk publishes no tier below Executive Management the real second layer and its succession depth are invisible from outside — and thinner after a 9% headcount reduction than they were before it.

Interesting facts

• Only two of the eleven Executive Management members — the CEO and the CFO — are registered with the Danish Business Authority as statutory executive management; the other nine hold management-board seats without that registration.
• Control and economics are deliberately decoupled: Novo Holdings A/S, wholly owned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, holds roughly 28% of the share capital but about 77% of the votes.
• At an extraordinary general meeting on 14 November 2025, seven sitting directors left the board and four new members joined, and the chair of the Novo Nordisk Foundation became chair of the listed company as well.
• Four of the twelve board seats are held by employee-elected directors under Danish co-determination rules, giving laboratory and production staff a permanent vote in the supervisory tier.
• Quality is organisationally insulated from output: Quality, IT & Environmental Affairs is a separate executive seat from CMC & Product Supply, so the function that can stop a batch does not report to the one measured on shipping it.
• Both externally facing commercial seats — Product & Portfolio Strategy and US Operations — were filled from outside the company in the same month, February 2026.

Frequently asked questions

Who owns and controls Novo Nordisk?

Novo Nordisk A/S is publicly traded, but control is not proportional to ownership. Novo Holdings A/S — wholly owned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, a Danish self-governing foundation — holds roughly 28% of the share capital and about 77% of the votes through the company's A and B share classes. Outside shareholders hold most of the economics and cannot carry a contested vote.

Why is the Board of Directors not in Novo Nordisk's org chart?

Denmark uses a two-tier governance model that separates supervision from management. The Board of Directors is entirely non-executive: the CEO is not a board member and no executive sits on the board, so the board supervises the company rather than sitting above the CEO in a management chain. Four of its twelve seats are held by employee-elected directors under Danish co-determination rules.

How many people are on Novo Nordisk's Executive Management?

Eleven — the President and CEO, eight executive vice presidents and two senior vice presidents, one of whom is Chief of Staff to the CEO. That is the complete published leadership layer. Novo Nordisk names no tier beneath it, which is why this chart stops at eleven people rather than inventing a second level.

What changed in Novo Nordisk's 2025 and 2026 reorganisation?

Three things. Research & Early Development and Development merged into one R&D organisation under a single executive in August 2025. A transformation programme announced in September 2025 removed roughly 9,000 roles and carried about DKK 8 billion of one-off restructuring charges. And from 1 January 2026 manufacturing was re-cut into CMC & Product Supply, with Quality, IT & Environmental Affairs held as a separate executive seat.

Can I edit this Novo Nordisk org chart?

Yes. Open it as your own chart and it becomes an ordinary QueryChart org chart — rename the people, add the levels your company actually has, or keep the column and seniority-band layout and drop your own executive team into it. It is a reasonable starting point for a functional company that keeps quality or compliance outside the operating line.

Use this org chart template

Open Novo Nordisk's structure as an editable org chart and use its functional columns and seniority bands as a frame for your own executive team.

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