Introduction by Kurt Anker Nielsen
Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of our Corporate Management I would like to welcome you to this presentation and to thank you for coming.
With me here today are two of my colleagues from Novo Nordisk's Corporate Management; they are Lars Rebien Sørensen, who is in charge of Health Care Business, and Steen Riisgaard, who is in charge of Enzyme Business.
Claus Kühl, who is also part of our team, is the newly appointed President of Novo Nordisk's fully-owned research subsidiary, ZymoGenetics, located in Seattle, Washington, and responsible for Novo Nordisk's U.S. discovery activities. Claus Kühl is a medical doctor and diabetologist, and he has for almost 15 years been with Novo Nordisk in Copenhagen in different management positions, especially within our Diabetes Care Business.
The structure of our presentation is as follows: After my introduction, Claus Kühl will give a general overview on diabetes, its treatment and the developments within this area, including Novo Nordisk's discovery activities. Thereafter, Lars Rebien Sørensen and Steen Riisgaard will report from the Health Care Business and the Enzyme Business, respectively. Finally, I will touch upon the financials for 1995 and the outlook for 1996.
Slide 1 Main elements of Novo Nordisk's new corporate strategy
By the end of 1994 we decided on a new strategy based on the following main elements:
Focus on three therapeutic areas within Health Care, namely Diabetes Care, Women's Health Care, and human Growth Hormone and on our industrial Enzyme Business.
Within the healthcare core businesses we will seek strategic alliance partners who can complement our own skills in order to strengthen the project and product portfolio and improve the sales and marketing effort.
Streamline our R&D project portfolio and significantly reduce development times.
Seek partners for or divest of the following none-core business areas:
Ferrosan, the OTC business
Plant Protection business
Plasma Product Unit
Now, what have we achieved so far in implementing this strategy?
Slide 2 Major steps taken in the implementation of Novo Nordisks new corporate strategy
In June 1995, we announced a world-wide alliance with LifeScan (a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary), the world's largest producer of Blood Glucose Monitoring Devices. This alliance constitutes an important element in our efforts to become a broad provider of diabetes care products and services.
In August 1995, we announced the signing of an agreement with Incyte Pharmaceuticals that secures Novo Nordisk access to Incyte's proprietary DNA sequence and Gene Expression database.
In August, we also announced the out-licensing of TPO (thrombopoietin) to Amgen/Kirin as this was believed to be the best way for Novo Nordisk to maximize the income stream from this project.
In October, we announced the divestiture of Novo Nordisk's biological plant protection business to Abbott Laboratories,
and, in November, Ferrosan was divested in a Management Buy-Out.
In February of 1996, we signed Heads of Agreement regarding the sale of the Plasma Product Unit to the U.S. based company, HemaSure.
Also in February we announced the plans to close the enzyme production plant in Japan and the bulk-antibiotics plant in Italy, both as of 30 June, 1996.
Finally, in February 1996, we announced a research collaboration agreement with Houghten Pharmaceuticals within the area of combinatorial chemistry.
Alongside these concrete steps, we have put great effort into establishing the details of the operational strategies of our core business areas.
The content of these business strategies will be touched upon by my colleagues in their presentations, so let us continue with these.
