Pharmaceutical Executive Daily: Mike Doustdar Open to Direct Listing for Novo Shares

Welcome to Pharmaceutical Executive Daily, your quick briefing on the top news shaping the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry.

In today's Pharmaceutical Executive Daily, Pharmaceutical Executive speaks with Jen Norton of EVERSANA on why market access has grown too complex for historical playbooks and why AI is now essential to modeling what comes next, a new analysis from MIT's Partha Anbil and Harvard Business School's Satish Tadikonda argues that clinical data harmonization is the biggest barrier standing between life sciences companies and operational AI deployment, and Novo chief executive officer Mike Doustdar says he's open to exploring a direct listing of the company's shares on the New York Stock Exchange.

Pharmaceutical Executive speaks with Jen Norton, who recently joined EVERSANA after more than 25 years in market access roles across big pharma, on how manufacturers can navigate an increasingly complex landscape to improve patient access to drugs. Norton argues that market access has become too complex for historical analogues to guide it, and contends that AI is now the only tool capable of modeling what the field looks like next.

Partha Anbil, a life sciences advisor at MIT, and Satish Tadikonda, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, argue that clinical data harmonization, not AI technology itself, is the real bottleneck holding life sciences companies back from moving beyond experimentation into full operational deployment. More than 50% of pharmaceutical professionals cite poor data quality as their top obstacle to AI implementation, even as 74% of senior life sciences executives call AI crucial to business strategy and the global AI pharmaceutical market climbs toward a projected $25.7 billion by 2030. The authors point to agentic AI orchestration and a shift toward "lakehouse" data architectures as ways to close the gap, noting semi-autonomous systems can cut time to actionable insights by up to 75%.

Finally, Novo chief executive officer Mike Doustdar says he's open to exploring a direct listing of the company's shares on the New York Stock Exchange, a move that would replace its current American depositary receipt structure and could simplify access for U.S. investors, who account for more than 50% of the revenue Novo now generates in the American market. Doustdar tells the Financial Times he "clearly sees some advantages" to the idea, though he stresses that no formal process or timetable exists and that Nasdaq Copenhagen remains Novo's primary listing. The idea has circulated inside the company for roughly a decade, surfacing now as Novo's share price sits more than 70% below its 2023 peak of over $600 billion in market value.

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