Novo Nordisk shares climb after positive results for anti-obesity pill
The value of the drugmaker Novo Nordisk jumped by about £9bn on Thursday after research showed that taking its new anti-obesity pill can result in almost as much weight loss as its Wegovy jab.The Danish company is racing against its US rival Eli Lilly to get a tablet treatment to market.Shares in Novo Nordisk climbed by more than 6% on hopes that it can claw back market share lost to Eli Lilly and cheaper generic versions of GLP-1 drugs.The shares had fallen by nearly 60% in the past year as sales slowed and Novo issued several profit warnings, prompting its new chief executive, Mike Doustdar, to plan 9,000 layoffs.Novo said on Thursday that a once-daily pill version of Wegovy helped people achieve “significant weight” loss in a clinical trial, with close to one in three participants losing 20% or more weight.
Side-effects were similar to the injectable version.It is the first oral GLP-1 drug submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the US regulator, and the company expects a decision on whether the FDA will approve it for use by the end of the year.Production has already begun at Novo’s US sites.In a 64-week late-stage trial involving 307 obese or overweight adults, patients on average lost 16.6% of their body weight.
The Danish company is going head to head with Lilly’s daily weight loss pill, called orforglipron.On Tuesday, the US drugmaker said one in five people lost 20% or more of their weight over 72 weeks, in a trial of 3,127 adults.Patients lost 12.4% of their body weight on average at the highest dose.Lilly developed orforglipron with a compound it acquired from Japan’s Chugai Pharmaceutical in 2018.
Eli Lilly plans to submit the pill to the regulator for approval later this year and some analysts say it could be fast-tracked by the FDA.Analysts estimate peak sales of $10bn a year for the drug, with the investment bank Jefferies seeing potential for up to $25bn.Matthew Weston, a UBS analyst, said he saw “clear leadership” for Novo’s oral obesity pill, forecasting peak annual sales of $5bn, including $4bn in the US, where 40% of people are obese.He added: “Orforglipron still presents a threat on being a more scalable product, and therefore potentially discounted price.It also doesn’t require the 30 minutes fasting, so could be seen as a more convenient option.
”While anti-obesity jabs, which mimic a gut hormone called GLP-1, have been immensely popular, they are very expensive, especially after Lilly’s recent price increase of up to 170% in the UK.The NHS has limited their availability to people with high clinical need.Pill versions are easier to store, distribute and administer and are expected to be cheaper, paving the way for millions more people to lose weight at a time when obesity is increasing around the world.The main problem with developing a tablet version was that the peptide in semaglutide, Wegovy’s main ingredient, breaks down immediately in the acidic environment of the stomach, but Novo has added an absorption enhancer to speed its passage into the bloodstream.The shares of GLP-1 drugmakers have vastly outperformed pharmaceutical companies that do not make those weight loss drugs.
Privatisation of UK industries is driving cost of living crisis, says Greens leader
The privatisation of the UK’s key industries is driving the cost of living crisis, damaging critical public services and making life harder for millions of people, the leader of the Green party, Zack Polanski, has said.Speaking after the Guardian revealed the British public have been paying a “privatisation premium” of £250 per household per year since 2010, he described the mass privatisation of UK industry as a “failed experiment”.“This report shows that privatisation has been one of the key drivers of the cost-of-living crisis and growing inequality … the Conservatives were the architects of this failed experiment, but the Labour government has done virtually nothing to change course.”In his successful campaign to become Labour leader in 2020, Keir Starmer vowed to support “common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water” but has backtracked since coming into power, ruling out nationalisation of the big six energy companies, water or mail.Labour has made some moves towards nationalisation, bringing some train operators back into public ownership, establishing the publicly owned GB Energy and completing the re-nationalisation of the national energy system operator
Starmer to recognise Palestinian state ‘after Trump state visit’
Keir Starmer will reportedly recognise a Palestinian state over the weekend after Donald Trump concludes his state visit to the UK.The prime minister has previously said he plans to recognise Palestinian statehood before the UN general assembly in New York this month if Israel does not meet a series of conditions to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza.High-level meetings at the UN summit involving world leaders begin on 23 September. According to the Times, Starmer has held off on formally announcing the UK will recognise a Palestinian state until after Trump leaves for fear it could dominate a Thursday news conference the two men plan to hold at Chequers.The prime minister has found himself at odds with the US administration over the move, which is opposed to giving official recognition to the state
Donald Trump joins royals for state banquet at Windsor as thousands protest against US president’s visit – as it happened
The pomp and pageantry have been laid on thick for Donald Trump’s historic and unprecedented second state visit, with the US president visibly delighted by a day of processions, flypasts and gifts.He was notably kept away from public crowds and mostly contained within the walls of Windsor Castle, as members of the Stop Trump Coalition gathered in London to protest against his visit. The Metropolitan police estimated 5,000 people attended the anti-Trump rally in Parliament Square, denouncing the US president as a “fascist”. There were other protests all across the country.Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader who is now an independent MP, also congratulated the four activists arrested by police after pictures of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were projected on to the walls of Windsor Castle last night
Nick Clegg: US-UK tech deal is ‘sloppy seconds from Silicon Valley’
A multibillion-dollar transatlantic tech agreement announced to coincide with Donald Trump’s state visit represents “sloppy seconds from Silicon Valley”, Nick Clegg, Meta’s former president of global affairs, has said.The former deputy prime minister said the deals, heralded with great fanfare by the government as it tries to foster growth in the UK, were “mutton dressed as lamb” and would make the country ever more reliant on US tech firms.The announcements have included some of the biggest companies in the tech world, such as chipmaker Nvidia and the ChatGPT developer OpenAI. One announcement featured a Microsoft investment that was said to be worth $30bn (£22bn).However, speaking at a Royal Television Society conference in Cambridge, Clegg said the relationship between the UK and the US tech sector was “all one-way traffic” and that the announcements suited the companies
A wake-up call for all of us to resist the far right | Letters
Peter Kyle, the business and trade secretary, has said that he was not disturbed by the Tommy Robinson march on Saturday (Trump has fanned the flames of divisive politics around the world, says Sadiq Khan, 16 September). Well I certainly was. The levels of threatening hate and violence should be a wake-up call, not just for government ministers but for all of us. Stand Up to Racism has done its best to mobilise people to tackle this threat, but it’s clear that we have to find a new way forward to reinforce this work. I am urging people in all civil society organisations to start talking about the situation and in each sector to start talking to each other
‘Privatisation premium’: billions from UK energy bills paid to shareholders
A quarter of the average UK energy bill was funding corporate profits last year, according to analysis that reveals the hidden cost of privatising some of the UK’s key industries.The study – part of a wider Who Owns Britain project by the Common Wealth thinktank – found that a sum equal to 24.2% of the average energy bill went to the pre-tax profits of the major electricity generators, networks and household suppliers in 2024.In addition, the analysis reveals the scale of wealth extracted from bill payers since the privatisation of Britain’s energy system. It found that shareholders of Britain’s privatised energy companies have taken at least £70
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How AI is undermining learning and teaching in universities | Letter
Top UK artists urge Starmer to protect their work on eve of Trump visit