This is Novo Nordisk's first social report. And as such it is a first step.

All over the world, Novo Nordisk conducts its business with ambitious goals. It is important for us to be the best in our businesses, but it is equally important to achieve this while setting the highest standards for our business conduct. We believe this will be achieved if we follow our company's core values. We have therefore chosen to use our social reporting as a means of documenting our performance against Novo Nordisk's basic values. In plain talk, we wish to be able to demonstrate that we 'walk the talk'.

A few years ago we started an internal initiative called 'Values in Action'. This forms the basis for aligning our business to the economic, social and environmental imperatives of sustainable development. We have, as a matter of course, reported on our financial performance for years. For the last six years, our environment and bioethics report has documented how far we have come in managing our environmental impact and bioethical issues. Now is the time to expand our reporting to social responsibility, which we understand in a simple sense to mean our impact on people.

Through reporting and dialogue we want to gain a better understanding of what social responsibility means ­ in general and to Novo Nordisk ­ in a period where we operate in an increasingly complex global marketplace. The pace of global business is so rapid that businesses will frequently encounter political or cultural dilemmas earlier than politicians or regulators. This can leave companies in a situation where they need to defend their presence. In our view, companies have an obligation to report on their activities in markets which may be considered 'controversial', demonstrating their readiness to ensure that social concerns are an integral part of their business strategy.

The internal discussions at Novo Nordisk are also very important. At Novo Nordisk, each of us is accountable ­ not only for business results, but also for the development of our company culture and our shared values. We count on everyone at Novo Nordisk to keep our values alive, by challenging them and living them. Although it is sometimes made difficult by our ever changing environment, we must make certain that we express our values in a manner which addresses tomorrow's concerns.

Our ambition is that Novo Nordisk will be one of the companies setting the standards globally for social responsibility practice and reporting. However, as a first step, it would be presumptuous to assume that we have identified exactly the social issues which are of key interest to our stakeholders, and that we have found an appropriate way of reporting on our activities and on our progress towards the targets we set. This ambition can only be fulfilled through a systematic dialogue with key stakeholders.

So this first report is no more or less than an invitation to start a dialogue ­ an invitation that we sincerely hope you will accept.

Mads Øvlisen
President & CEO
25 June 1999