HIGHLIGHTS: Vasant Narasimhan - CEO of Novartis

Hi everybody, tune in to this short version of the podcast, which we do every Friday. For the long version, tune in on Wednesdays. Hi everyone, I'm Nikola Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund, and today I'm in really good company with Vass Nara Sieman, the CEO of Novartis. Vass has one of the most fascinating backgrounds in pharma. He is a trained physician.

who also worked in the front lines fighting tuberculosis and malaria in developing countries before rising to lead one of the world largest pharmaceutical companies. We own 2.3% of Novartis, and that's worth more than $5 billion, roughly 10,000 Norwegian kroner per Norwegian citizen. So Vas, big thanks for joining us. Great to be here, Nikolai. Just uh briefly to uh kick off, for those who are not familiar with Novartis, in 10 uh seconds, just uh what are your areas of focus?

Yeah, we're one of the largest biopharmaceutical companies uh in the world, focused on innovative medicines in oncology, cardiovascular disease, neuroscience, and in immunological diseases. Now, you have a different background compared to many other pharma CEOs. How do you think that has shaped your approach to approach to leading novartists? Well, I think it's uh it's helped in many dimensions. I mean, being coming from uh being a physician, coming from a scientific background, I'm definitely steeped in the R<unk>D elements of the work we do.

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