Novo Nordisk Leads Industry Sector in Sustainability

January 23, 2013 /3BL Media/ – Today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Novo Nordisk received the top position in the Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology industry group of the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World index. The index is published annually since 2005 by Corporate Knights – a Canadian and North American business magazine.

The aim of the Global 100 is to highlight the global companies that are most proactive in managing their environmental and social performance and corporate governance issues. Overall, Novo Nordisk ranked fifth on the 2013 list of global sustainable companies having moved down four places from its 2012 number one ranking.

Out of the 12 key performance indicators, Novo Nordisk received a Best Performance rating on:

·         energy use and greenhouse gas emissions as a percentage of revenue,

·         CEO compensation as a percentage of average employee pay, and

·         the mechanisms in place that link senior executive pay to clean capitalism targets.  

Novo Nordisk’s drop from its 2012 top position is a reflection of below average performance on the companies waste productivity, R&D expenditure as a percentage of revenue, taxes paid as a percentage of earnings, employee safety performance and employee turnover.

“We are proud to see Novo Nordisk’s sustainability performance being ranked among the best,” says Susanne Stormer, vice president of Corporate Sustainability, Novo Nordisk. “Our sustainability leadership is borne out of being confronted by challenges, and rakings such as this keep us on our toes to continuously keep pushing for stronger performance on all three bottom lines.”

Corporate Knights selects the Global 100 from a base of 4,000 developed and emerging market stocks, based on their sustainability ratings from the world’s largest sustainability research consortium, the Global Sustainability Research Alliance (GSRA). The GSRA integrates research from 10 leading firms across the globe including Goldman Sachs | GS SUSTAIN, Société Générale, EIRIS, and RiskMetrics Group.

For more information about Global 100: www.global100.org

About Novo Nordisk sustainability efforts: novonordisk.com/sustainability

About Novo Nordisk

Headquartered in Denmark, Novo Nordisk is a global healthcare company with 90 years of innovation and leadership in diabetes care. The company also has leading positions within haemophilia care, growth hormone therapy and hormone replacement therapy. For more information, visit novonordisk.com.

Novo Nordisk strives to conduct its activities in a financially, environmentally and socially responsible way. The strategic commitment to corporate sustainability has brought the company onto centre stage as a leading player in today’s business environment, recognised for its integrated reporting, stakeholder engagement and consistently high sustainability performance. In 2013, Novo Nordisk received the Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology industry group top ranking on Corporate Knight’s list of Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations. Novo Nordisk is listed in the 2011/2012 Dow Jones Sustainability Indices with a gold class rating. For more information, visit novonordisk.com/sustainability.