In a bid to regain operational stability, Novo Nordisk’s Board of Directors has nominated two new members to join the committee, which has been undergoing a revamp in recent months.
Jan van de Winkel and Ramona Sequeira would both serve a one-year term if elected by shareholders in an Annual General Meeting, which will be held on 26 March.
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Having worked in the pharma industry for more than a quarter of a century, van de Winkel has held C-suite roles across pharma and biotech – serving as the VP and scientific director of Medarex Europe prior to co-founding therapeutic antibody-focused biotech, Genmab. Since then, he has occupied varying high-level positions at the company, including his current role as CEO, which he entered in 2010.
Meanwhile, Sequeira has spent more than three decades in pharma leadership roles across companies like Eli Lilly and Takeda Pharmaceutical. Between 2022 and Summer 2025, Sequeira was the president of Takeda’s global portfolio division, and she currently serves as a board member for both Organon and Edwards Lifesciences.
Novo Nordisk’s board is also calling for the re-election of Lars Rebien Sørensen and Cees de Jong as chair and vice chair, respectively, as well as Britt Meelby Jensen, Kasim Kutay and Stephan Engels as members.
Alongside the board’s recommendations, Novo Nordisk’s majority shareholder, The Novo Nordisk Foundation, has put forward Helena Saxon as its recommendation. Saxon previously held a board position for 14 years at Swedish biopharma company, Sobi, before her resignation in October 2025. She currently sits on the board of the global retail brand, H&M.
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By GlobalDataNovo Nordisk board sees another shakeup
Novo Nordisk’s decision to hold a board re-election follows a period of significant change for the committee, which saw a mass exodus in October 2025 when seven members stood down. This was largely due to a disagreement between the board and its majority shareholder, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, on the council’s future composition.
If nominated, van de Winkel, Sequeira and Saxon would join a board of largely new appointees, who are looking to turn the company’s fortunes round as it grapples with competition from Eli Lilly in the cardiometabolic market. Currently, Novo Nordisk forecasts a sales dip of up to 13% in 2026 due to Most Favored Nation (MFN)-driven pricing headwinds in the US.
While the company has a head start in the oral glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA) market through its first-to-market approval of oral Wegovy (semaglutide), Lilly’s orforglipron is slated to enter the market in April this year, with a patient-based forecast from GlobalData estimating that the drug will bring in $14.3bn in 2031.
GlobalData is the parent company of Pharmaceutical Technology.
Novo Nordisk is also embroiled in a legal battle with telehealth giant Hims & Hers, which said it would sell compounded oral Wegovy after the drug’s market debut. While the company promptly stopped selling the compounded copycat after backlash from Novo and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Novo Nordisk is now suing the company for patent infringement. The FDA is now looking to stamp out the mass-marketing of unapproved drugs sold by telehealth companies.
