HIGHLIGHTS: Albert Bourla - CEO of Pfizer

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, and, welcome to In Good Company. I'm, Nikolai Tangen, the head of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund. And today, I'm in particularly good company because I'm here with Albert Bourla, who is the chairman and CEO of Pfizer, one of the largest pharma companies in the world. Now, Albert, he has been with Pfizer for thirty years, been CEO since 2019, and has led the company through a remarkable period of change. Warm welcome. Thank you very much. And, you know, I'm with Pfizer thirty three years. I'm with my wife. I'm with my wife, thirty. Alright. I I got it mixed up there, Evan. Yes. Yes. Now, a lot of stuff has happened since you took over as, CEO. What what are you most excited about just now? I think, I'm always excited, by by the future, like all CEOs. Right? They see the the opportunities ahead and, science is at the highest levels we ever had it, and science is affecting our business, very big time. So I'm very, very optimistic about the scientific progress that we can see in the next, years until the end of the decade. You sharpened the focus on innovative medicine, sold off consumer health care and so on. Why did you think that was the right decision to make? I'm a believer, but, you know, corporations' role is not to heads. It is, to be very good, a few things. Investors role is to head. So I believe that requires different culture for a scientific company and different culture for a consumer company and very different culture for an of patent generic company. So I felt that, we should choose to be good at what it is really important, and that was science. Now we're not going to spend much time on on COVID, but we have to just touch on the fact that you did an unbelievable job, put a a huge amount of your own capital in there and produced a vaccine in eight months. Just how was that possible? Well, you know, it was the possible, for several reasons, but the most important is was exceptional times. So everybody felt that this is not business as usual and everybody felt that the culture of society, our civilization is at it's at risk. So everybody gave everything. And when I say everybody, I mean the government, I mean the our people, I mean, our hospitals that corroborated. Mhmm. So it was, not easy to be done without them being aligned. The other area you wanted to zoom in on was obesity, and you you you, you bought Matera. Why was that so important to buy? And you you opened Novo Nordisk, there. Yes. We we always, believe that, obesity is a very big area. And we always believe that Pfizer, it is the company …