A century ago the makers of a revolutionary new drug called insulin promised not to make “nasty profits”. Their commitment created what is now the largest charitable foundation in the world, fuelled by the latest major development in medical science: anti-obesity drugs.

The Novo Nordisk Foundation is the controlling shareholder of Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk, currently Europe’s most valuable company thanks to soaring sales of weight loss and diabetes drugs Wegovy and Ozempic. The foundation holds 77 per cent of Novo’s voting rights and 28.1 per cent of its shares.

Chief executive Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen told the Financial Times in an interview at the foundation’s headquarters in Copenhagen that the soaring popularity of the drugs, known as GLP-1s after the hormone they mimic, took him by surprise. “It is a little bit of a dream come true.”