Office profile
Novo Nordisk Headquarters & offices · Bagsværd, Denmark
Novo Nordisk · Bagsværd, Denmark
A round headquarters in a park, with a spiral staircase inspired by the helix of the insulin molecule winding up under a glass dome.
The buildings, the people programmes and a century of addresses around Copenhagen — then the business. Every number from Novo Nordisk's own annual reports, website and its architects' project texts.
- 50,200 m²Corporate Center, two buildings (2013)
- 14 weekspaid leave for non-birthing parents, worldwide
- 47%of leaders are women (2025)
- 69,505employees at the end of 2025
Sources: Annual Report 2025 (Own workforce, Five-year overview) · Henning Larsen project text (Architizer, World-Architects, ArchDaily)
Companies / Denmark / Pharmaceuticals / Novo Nordisk
THE HEADQUARTERS · NOVO NORDISK CORPORATE CENTER · 2013
A circle with no beginning and no end, set in a park
Henning Larsen designed the Corporate Center as two white buildings in a green, hilly landscape at the heart of the Novo campus in Bagsværd. The six-storey round building is shaped after the helix of the insulin molecule: a spiral staircase with white balconies winds from the foyer to the executive floor, under a skylight that brings daylight into the whole atrium. A four-storey wedge-shaped building steps down the slope beside it. It houses top management and about 1,100 administrative employees.
- Design: Henning Larsen
- Landscape: SLA
- 50,200 m² (≈ 540,000 sq ft)
- Round building: 6 floors
- Glass dome on a 32 m steel ring
- For 1,100 office staff + top management
Facts: Henning Larsen project text (Architizer, World-Architects) · Henning Larsen video (2012) · MT Højgaard project page “Novo Nordisk Head Office”.
The Corporate Center on Novo Allé
| Building | Address |
|---|---|
| Corporate Center — round building (6 floors) | Novo Allé 1, 2880 Bagsværd, Denmark |
| Corporate Center — wedge building (4 floors) | Novo Allé 1, 2880 Bagsværd, Denmark |
Source: Annual Report 2025 (company address) · Henning Larsen project text · MT Højgaard project page · See them on the map ↓
Source: Henning Larsen project text (Architizer) · ArchDaily project data · MT Højgaard project page (which gives 50,500 m² total floor area) · sq ft converted by eciffo
Office tour videos
Benefits and working conditions (global)
Paid leave for non-birthing parents, extended to every country.
For the 2023 centenary, every eligible employee got 74 restricted stock units, each one free Novo Nordisk B share in August 2026.
Employees can apply for career breaks, compressed work weeks or reduced hours.
Pay exceeds local living-wage standards and is reviewed for changes in the cost of living.
Employees can see salary ranges, incentives and their own salary positioning; equal-pay reviews cover operations outside the US and Canada.
Paid into defined-contribution pension plans in 2025.
Hours are monitored in Denmark and the EU; elsewhere, without local rules, the aim is under 48 hours a week.
Five agreements with elected employee representatives; management meets union representatives every quarter.
Source: Novo Nordisk Annual Report 2025 (3. Own workforce; note 2.4 Employee costs; note 5.1 Share-based payment schemes). Country-level benefit pages were not found on novonordisk.com.
What keeps people at Novo Nordisk — and a hard year
Favourable answers in the 2025 Evolve survey (85% in 2024, 86% in 2023), taken before the September reorganisation.
Up from 5.5% in 2024 after a company-wide transformation that cut about 9,000 positions.
Ongoing development dialogues, self-directed learning, internal mentors and coaches, and short-term job rotations open to all.
An enterprise-wide psychological-safety concept with tools and training was rolled out in 2025.
Vice president level and above, up from 41% in 2023.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation holds control, so the company can do what is best in the long term for patients, employees and shareholders.
Source: Annual Report 2025 (3. Own workforce; 2025 at a glance) · novonordisk.com “Our heritage”
Who works here
of all leaders are women
of VP-level leaders and above are women
permanent and 4,531 temporary employees
people left during 2025
Source: Annual Report 2025, 3.1.1 Characteristics of Novo Nordisk's employees and sustainability data (gender in leadership). Region split as reported; shares calculated by eciffo.
Office history: from a villa in Hellerup to a round house in Bagsværd
- 1923 A villa in Hellerup — Nordisk Insulinlaboratorium
After August Krogh brought permission to make insulin home from Toronto, he and Hans Christian Hagedorn began extracting it in Hagedorn's villa in Hellerup, north of Copenhagen. Nordisk Insulinlaboratorium treated its first patients in March 1923.
Source: novonordisk.com “Our heritage” · Novo Nordisk Foundation history
Hagedorn's villa in Hellerup, 1923 · © Novo Nordisk - 1925 Novo Terapeutisk Laboratorium is founded
Brothers Harald and Thorvald Pedersen, former Nordisk employees, started their own insulin company. Novo and Nordisk competed for the next 64 years.
Source: novonordisk.com “Our heritage” · Novo Nordisk Foundation history
No free-to-use photo found yet.Have one? We’d love to add it. - 1932 Fuglebakken, Frederiksberg — a dairy and an Arne Jacobsen factory
Novo moved into a 1914 dairy building at Nordre Fasanvej and Hillerødgade. Arne Jacobsen designed the new factory next to it and stayed Novo's house architect until 1971; his three-legged Ant chair (1952) was made for the canteen here. Novo produced enzymes at Fuglebakken until 2019.
Source: Symbion (current owner of Fuglebakken)
Fuglebakken, Arne Jacobsen · seier+seier / CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons - 1950s The Bagsværd site begins
Novo's site in Bagsværd, north-west of Copenhagen, dates back to the 1950s and grew into today's Novo campus.
Source: Novo Nordisk video “The history of Novo Nordisk Headquarters – Denmark”
Novo Nordisk, Bagsværd, 2025 · Toxophilus / CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons - 1989 Merger: Novo Nordisk A/S, headquartered in Bagsværd
Novo Industri and Nordisk Gentofte — two companies a few kilometres apart — merged into Novo Nordisk A/S, with its headquarters in Bagsværd. Their foundations merged into the Novo Nordisk Foundation.
Source: novonordisk.com “Our heritage” · Novo Nordisk Foundation history · HQ location confirmed on Wikipedia
No free-to-use photo found yet.Have one? We’d love to add it. - 2013 The Corporate Center by Henning Larsen
Two new office buildings — one round, one wedge-shaped — opened in a park at the heart of the campus for top management and about 1,100 administrative staff. In 2026 the company began using the shorter name “Novo” day to day; Novo Nordisk A/S remains the legal name.
Source: Henning Larsen project text · novonordisk.com “The next chapter of Novo begins today” (2026)
From above, 2013 · Photo: Jens Markus Lindhe / Henning Larsen
Map: how the headquarters moved
Novo started in Frederiksberg, in the middle of Copenhagen, and has made Bagsværd — about 9 km to the north-west — its home since the merger in 1989.
- 1 · 1932Fuglebakken, Frederiksberg — Novo's factory and offices at Nordre Fasanvej / Hillerødgade
- 2 · 1989Novo Allé, Bagsværd — Headquarters of the merged Novo Nordisk A/S
- 3 · 2013Corporate Center, Novo Allé 1 — Henning Larsen's round headquarters — today
Addresses: Symbion (Fuglebakken) · Annual Report 2025 (Novo Allé 1, 2880 Bagsværd) · Locations: eciffo from the street addresses. Hagedorn's villa in Hellerup (1923) and Nordisk's Gentofte site are not mapped because no street address was published.
What Novo Nordisk does
Novo Nordisk began by making insulin in 1923. Today it sells medicines for diabetes, obesity and rare blood and hormone disorders — above all the GLP-1 medicines Ozempic® and Wegovy® — and reached 45.6 million people with its obesity and diabetes products in 2025.
Two segments: Obesity and Diabetes care, and Rare disease. Sales are reported for US Operations and International Operations (EUCAN, Emerging Markets, APAC, Region China).
Where the money came from · Net sales by therapy area, 2025
Source: Annual Report 2025, note 2.1 Net sales – segments and geographical areas
Source: Annual Report 2025 (Five-year overview; note 2.1) · per-employee figure calculated by eciffo
Growth: revenue vs. people
DKK 111.8B → DKK 309.1B
42,446 → 69,505
Calendar years, DKK billion. Net sales: Annual Report 2019 five-year overview (2016–2018), SEC XBRL data from Form 20-F (2019–2020), Annual Report 2025 five-year overview (2021–2025). Employees (headcount, year-end): Annual Report 2019 and 2025 five-year overviews; 2024 includes Catalent sites (74,156 without); 2020 not found in a form we could confirm. Multiples calculated by eciffo.
Chief executives
President and CEO since August 2025; previously executive vice president of International Operations.
President and CEO from 1 January 2017 until he stepped down on 6 August 2025.
President and CEO for 17 years; later chair of Novo Holdings (2018–2025) and now on the Novo Nordisk board.
Nordisk (1923): August Krogh, Hans Christian Hagedorn and August Kongsted, urged on by Marie Krogh. Novo (1925): Harald and Thorvald Pedersen.
Source: Annual Report 2025 (2025 at a glance) · Corporate Governance Report 2025 · Annual Report 2016 · novonordisk.com board profile of Lars Rebien Sørensen · “Our heritage”
Novo Nordisk: questions people ask
Where is Novo Nordisk's headquarters?
At Novo Allé 1, 2880 Bagsværd, Denmark, just north-west of Copenhagen. Top management works in the Corporate Center, two buildings in a park at the heart of the Novo campus.
Source: Annual Report 2025 · Henning Larsen project text
Who designed Novo Nordisk's headquarters?
Henning Larsen designed the Corporate Center, completed in 2013, with SLA as landscape architect and Alectia as engineer. MT Højgaard built it under a design-and-build contract.
Source: Henning Larsen (Architizer, ArchDaily) · MT Højgaard
Why is the Novo Nordisk headquarters round?
The architects took the helix of the insulin molecule as inspiration: it shaped the round building and the spiral staircase with white balconies that winds through the atrium up to the executive floor.
Source: Henning Larsen project text (Architizer)
How big is Novo Nordisk's headquarters?
The Corporate Center has about 50,200 m² (≈ 540,000 sq ft): 32,500 m² in the six-storey round building, including a 13,000 m² underground car park, and 17,700 m² in the four-storey wedge building. It was built for about 1,100 administrative staff and top management.
Source: Henning Larsen project text · ArchDaily · MT Højgaard
How many people work at Novo Nordisk?
69,505 people at the end of 2025, down 10% from 77,349 a year earlier after a company-wide transformation. 29,613 of them work in Denmark.
Source: Annual Report 2025
What parental leave does Novo Nordisk offer?
Paid parental leave for non-birthing parents has been extended globally to 14 weeks.
Source: Annual Report 2025, 3.1 Working conditions
Does Novo Nordisk give employees shares?
For its 100th anniversary in 2023, every eligible employee received 74 restricted stock units, each worth one Novo Nordisk B share free of charge in August 2026 if they are still employed.
Source: Annual Report 2025, note 5.1
Can Novo Nordisk employees work flexibly?
Employees can apply for flexible work arrangements such as career breaks, compressed work weeks or reduced hours, with pay and benefits adjusted to match.
Source: Annual Report 2025, 3.1 Working conditions
What is Novo Nordisk's employee turnover?
18.4% in 2025, up from 5.5% in 2024 and 2023, because of the reorganisation that removed about 9,000 positions.
Source: Annual Report 2025
Who is Novo Nordisk's CEO?
Maziar Mike Doustdar, president and CEO since August 2025. He succeeded Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, CEO from 2017.
Source: Annual Report 2025 · Corporate Governance Report 2025
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Novo Nordisk's official social accounts
Accounts linked from novonordisk.com (contact page, 2026).