Business Post tallies Novo Nordisk's written-off acquisitions

An Irish business publication has published an analysis cataloguing billions of dollars in Novo Nordisk acquisitions that the company has since written off or impaired, including a deal now tied up in legal action against KBP Biosciences ^[1]. The report frames that history against Novo's July 31 failure of ziltivekimab, its experimental anti-inflammatory heart drug, in the ZEUS trial ^[1][2]. The timing highlights a pattern: Novo's attempts to build revenue outside its core GLP-1 franchise have repeatedly stumbled, even as sales of semaglutide products recover.

The ziltivekimab setback is the clearest recent example. In a Phase 3 trial of more than 6,300 patients with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease and elevated inflammation, the drug failed to significantly reduce major cardiovascular events compared with placebo ^[2]. Novo shares fell roughly 9 percent on the news, wiping out about $30 billion in market value in a single day, and the company says a non-cash impairment charge tied to the drug will show up in its third-quarter results ^[2]. Two related trials, HERMES in heart failure and ARTEMIS in heart attack patients, are still running ^[2]. Novo has said its 2026 adjusted operating profit outlook is unchanged despite the impairment ^[2].

The Business Post piece places that failure inside a longer record of write-downs across Novo's deal history, and separately reports that the company is pursuing legal action against KBP Biosciences ^[1]. The full details of which acquisitions were written off, and by how much, sit behind a paywall and are not available in the source material reviewed for this article, so specific deal-by-deal figures are not yet confirmed here.

The backdrop is a company under pressure to prove it has more than one growth engine. Novo changed chief executives in August 2025, cut about 9,000 jobs, and saw its CagriSema obesity combination post weight loss of 22.7 percent in trials, short of the roughly 25 percent investors had hoped for ^[2]. Those setbacks left Novo trailing rival Eli Lilly in the obesity race. Even so, Novo's core business is stabilizing: the company raised its full-year 2026 sales outlook to a range of flat to down 6 percent, an improvement from a prior forecast of down 4 to 12 percent, and posted adjusted operating profit of 33.4 billion Danish kroner in the second quarter, up 11 percent ^[2]. Wegovy's oral pill brought in 3.22 billion kroner in the quarter, just under the 3.27 billion analysts expected ^[2].

Why it matters for patients

Patients taking Wegovy, Ozempic or Rybelsus are unlikely to see direct changes from this corporate news. Ziltivekimab was never an obesity or diabetes drug; it targeted inflammation tied to heart and kidney disease in a separate patient population, and its failure does not affect the approved GLP-1 products people currently take ^[2]. But the broader story matters for anyone weighing which company's pipeline to watch. A company under financial and strategic pressure may prioritize resources differently, and Novo's difficulty building a non-GLP-1 business could shape how much it invests in future obesity and metabolic drugs like CagriSema, which is awaiting an FDA decision expected in the second half of 2026 ^[2].

What happens next

Novo's non-cash impairment tied to ziltivekimab is expected in its third-quarter 2026 results ^[2]. The HERMES and ARTEMIS trials for ziltivekimab continue, and their outcomes will determine whether the drug has any remaining path forward ^[2]. A regulatory decision on CagriSema, Novo's once-weekly GLP-1 plus amylin combination, is expected sometime in the second half of 2026 ^[2]. Further detail on the specific acquisitions catalogued by the Business Post, and the scale of associated write-offs, may become available as more of that reporting circulates.