(Reuters) -Mikael Dolsten, Pfizer’s former research and development chief, has withdrawn his candidacy for Novo Nordisk’s board, citing personal reasons, the Danish drugmaker said on Thursday.
Dolsten, who led Pfizer’s R&D operations until 2024, informed Novo that he would not seek election at Friday’s extraordinary general meeting.
He has previously held senior R&D roles at Boehringer Ingelheim and AstraZeneca.
The other board candidates standing for election remain unchanged from the October 21 meeting notice, Novo Nordisk said.
The development comes as Novo Nordisk’s top investor, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, in October moved to take control of the drugmaker’s board, vowing a sharper focus on the key U.S. market to revive sales of blockbuster weight-loss drug Wegovy as Novo’s chair and six independent board members quit.
The company is also facing a shareholder backlash as its minority investors prepare a protest vote against a board shake-up forced through by its dominant shareholder.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation and Novo Holdings, the company’s controlling shareholders, will not propose a replacement candidate at Friday’s meeting. Instead, they said the incoming board should identify and nominate two additional candidates at the annual general meeting on March 26, 2026, alongside already-nominated candidate Helena Saxon.
If all proposed candidates are elected, the board will consist of nine members after Friday’s vote: five shareholder-elected directors including Chairman Lars Rebien Sørensen and Vice Chair Cees de Jong, and four employee-elected representatives.
Dolsten spent over 25 years at Pfizer, where he oversaw development of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine partnership with German drugmaker BioNTech.
(Reporting by Padmanabhan Ananthan in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)
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