Luxury fashion house LVMH has reclaimed its title as Europe’s most valuable company from Novo Nordisk, as early signs of a luxury comeback coincided with fresh struggles for the Danish Ozempic maker.
LVMH dethroned Novo Nordisk on Friday in the same week that Cartier owner Richemont surged on the back of record quarterly results, stoking hopes for a luxury revival. The change in rankings is a result of Novo Nordisk’s decline however, with LVMH now worth €5 billion more than the Danish giant.
The company’s founder and CEO, Bernard Arnault, enjoyed another surge in his net worth as a result, meaning he has added $12 billion to his wealth in 2025, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Arnault remains the fifth richest person in the world, sitting neck and neck with Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison in fourth place with an estimated net worth of $188 billion.
Novo Nordisk, meanwhile, faced a 5% share price decline on Friday after outgoing U.S. president Joe Biden announced the company’s semaglutide drug, the medication used in Wegovy and Ozempic, would be the subject of price negotiations with Medicare.
The Biden administration targeted 15 drugs in its latest round of negotiations scheduled for 2027 price changes after successfully pulling prices down for 10 other drugs last year. Those price cuts, set for 2026, ranged from 38% to 79%.
A representative for Novo Nordisk told Fortune: "Novo Nordisk remains opposed to government price setting through the IRA and has significant concerns about how the law is being implemented by this administration.
“Even as our IRA lawsuit progresses, we remain committed to working with policymakers to advance solutions to ensure access and affordability for all patients.”
"However... we will work with the incoming administration to deliver meaningful solutions for patients."
News of price negotiations followed a stock market bloodbath in December when Novo Nordisk lost €90 billion in value when its latest weight loss drug, CagriSema, failed to hit a predicted 25% weight loss reduction target among trial participants.
LVMH and Novo Nordisk diverge again
The luxury sector, of which LVMH sits atop, experienced a sell-off in the second half of 2024. Major retailers were blighted by falling consumer sentiment in China, which followed a bumper COVID-19 period where revenues and profits consistently smashed fresh records.
LVMH is due to report results later in January, when investors will get a glimpse into how much Richemont’s results were a guide for the wider luxury sector. Its third-quarter results for 2024 revealed a 3% decline in revenues, while the company lost gains made from reports of a massive China stimulus package that was hoped to encourage spending.
The change in rankings will represent a fresh wake-up call for Danish pharma group Novo Nordisk.
Novo Nordisk has enjoyed a meteoric rise since 2019, growing from a middling pharmaceutical group, best known for the diabetes medicine insulin, to Europe’s most valuable company thanks to the marketing of its obesity-fighting GLP-1 drugs.
At the peak of its powers, Novo Nordisk was worth more than the entire Danish economy. The group’s swelling profits have helped the pharmaceutical sector become the overwhelming driver of Denmark’s GDP growth in 2022 and 2023, and policymakers have namechecked the pharma giant when setting monetary policy decisions.
