Novo Holdings A/S (formerly Novo A/S) is the Novo Nordisk Foundation's wholly owned holding company for Novo Nordisk A/S and Novozymes A/S. Novo Holdings A/S was established in 1999 and manages the Novo Nordisk Foundation's assets, which in 2022 was worth almost DKK 805 billion Danish Kroner (approximately US $107 billion) and is the largest charitable foundation in the world making Novo Holdings A/S a world-leading life sciences investor. Novo Holdings A/S is headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, with offices in San Francisco, Boston and Singapore.
Eivind Kolding succeeded Henrik Gürtler as CEO on 1 May 2014. Eivind Kolding left Novo Holdings A/S in March 2016 and Kasim Kutay took over as CEO for the organisation.
Since 2016 Kasim Kutay has been the CEO of Novo Holdings A/S.
Purpose
Novo Holdings A/S manages the Novo Nordisk Foundation's assets, aiming to enable and make a positive impact on health, science and society by generating long-term returns on the assets of the Novo Nordisk Foundation, which the Novo Nordisk Foundation in return can award as grants for scientific research and humanitarian and social purposes.
The overall purpose of Novo Holdings A/S is to hold the position as the controlling majority shareholder of the Novo Group companies (Novo Nordisk A/S and Novozymes A/S), aiming at making a positive impact on health, science and society by generating long-term returns on the assets of the Novo Nordisk Foundation. The Novo Nordisk Foundation is an enterprise foundation which is a self-governing entity with no owners, focusing on long-term ownership of the Novo Group (Novo Nordisk A/S and Novozymes A/S) while combining business and philanthropy within scientific, humanitarian and social purposes. A key task of Novo Holdings A/S is to act as a stable basis for the commercial activities of Novo Nordisk A/S and Novozymes A/S. Novo Holdings A/S also invests in both financial assets and in companies with application-oriented research in the life sciences.
Objectives
Novo Holdings A/S' objective is to grow the assets of the Novo Nordisk Foundation. In addition to investing in equity and fixed income securities, Novo Holdings pursues direct investments in life science companies. The Novo Nordisk Foundations share of financial returns generated from investments are added to the Novo Nordisk Foundation endowment and later distributed through charitable grants and awards aiming to improve the lives of people, science and society around the world.
Novo Holdings A/S is recognised as a leading international life science investor focusing on creating long-term value. Besides from being the controlling shareholder in the Novo Group companies (including Novo Nordisk A/S and Novozymes A/S), Novo Holdings also provides seed and venture capital to companies in the development-stage.
Novo Holdings also takes on significant ownership in growth and well-established companies and manages a broad portfolio of diversified financial assets.
Increased focus on industrial Biosolutions
In 2021-2022, Novo Holdings have announced an increased investment focusing on Biosolutions (also known under the term bioindustrials or biotechnologies within the healthcare and environmental spaces), aiming to make biotechnology a spearhead for the green transition. Novo Holdings claim that the ambition is "to help remove the roadblocks wherever they are, paving the way for promising biologic discoveries to become new solutions".
In 2021, Novo Holdings added numerous biotechnology companies to its portfolio, including 21st. BIO, which helps other biotechnology companies scale up production through an advanced technology platform.
These diverse investments include companies supplying climate-neutral cement, biopesticides, synthetic silk biopolymers and many other products and solutions that challenge current conventions. Novo Holdings added eight bioindustrial companies to its portfolio in 2021 and invested approx. €98 million ($97.35 million) in total in the bioindustrial space.
Investment profile
In 2021, the Novo Holdings portfolio focusing on Life Science Investment (Novo Seeds, Novo Growth, Novo Ventures and Novo Principal Investments) made up 52% of the total portfolio while the Novo Capital Investors made up the remaining 48% of the total portfolio. The Life Science Investment portfolio and Novo Capital Investors generated returns of approximately DKK 12 billion ($1.6 billion) in 2021.