In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen - HIGHLIGHTS: Albert Bourla - CEO of Pfizer

Episode Date: May 22, 2026

We've curated a special 10-minute version of the podcast for those in a hurry.   Here you can listen to the full episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/no/podcast/pfizer-ceo-transforming-drug-discovery-lessons-from/id1614211565?i=1000768670399&l=nbNicolai Tangen meets Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla for a wide-ranging conversation on leadership, science, and the future of global healthcare. Bourla reflects on leading Pfizer through the COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough and how it transformed the company. The discussion also dives into Pfizer’s strategic shift toward innovative medicine, including major investments in oncology and obesity, and the high-stakes decisions behind multibillion-dollar acquisitions. Looking ahead, the conversation explores how artificial intelligence is set to transform drug discovery, clinical trials, and the broader healthcare system. Bourla offers a candid view on global competition, particularly the rapid rise of China in biotech, and what it will take for companies like Pfizer to stay ahead. Beyond business, Bourla opens up about leadership, how to build resilience, foster organizational confidence, and continuously evolve as a CEO. He also shares a deeply personal story about his mother, a Holocaust survivor, and how her perspective shaped his optimism and drive.In Good Company is hosted by Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management. New full episodes every Wednesday, and don't miss our Highlight episodes every Friday.  The production team for this episode includes Isabelle Karlsson and PLAN-B's Niklas Figenschau Johansen, Sebastian Langvik-Hansen and Pål Huuse. Background research was conducted by Isabelle Karlsson. Watch the episode on YouTube: Norges Bank Investment Management - YouTubeWant to learn more about the fund? The fund | Norges Bank Investment Management (nbim.no)Follow Nicolai Tangen on LinkedIn: Nicolai Tangen | LinkedInFollow NBIM on LinkedIn: Norges Bank Investment Management: Administrator for bedriftsside | LinkedInFollow NBIM on Instagram: Explore Norges Bank Investment Management on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Nicola Tangen, the head of the Norwegian Southern Welfand. And today, I'm in particularly good company because I'm here with Albert Burla, 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 30 years, been CEO since 2019, and has led the company through a remarkable period of change. Warm welcome. Thank you very much.

And I'm with Pfizer 33 years. I'm with my wife 30. Oh, right. I got it mixed up there. Yes, yes. Now, a lot of stuff has happened since you took over as CEO. What are you most excited about just now? I think I'm always excited by the future, like all CEOs, right?

They see the opportunities ahead. And science is at the highest levels we ever had it. And science is affecting our business. business a 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, so love, consumer healthcare and so on. Why did you think that was the right decision to make? I'm a believer that, 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 off-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 huge amount of your own capital in there and produced vaccine in eight months just how was that possible Well, you know, it was possible for several reasons, but the most important is it was exceptional times.

So everybody felt that this is not business as usual, and everybody felt that the culture of society, our civilization, it's at risk. So everybody gave everything. And when I say everybody, I mean the government, I mean our people, I mean our people, I mean our hospitals that corroborated. 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 bought Metsera. Why was that so important to buy? And you old be Nova Nordisk there.

Yes. We always believe that obesity is a very big area. and we always believe that Pfizer, it is the company that can be very competitive over there. So we enter into the obesity spaceway back in the day. And if things wouldn't go wrong for us scientifically, because two major assets that we had in the cleaning, they suddenly saw signs of liver toxicity, so we had to discontinue them, although they were very effective.

But if that was not the case, we would be the first to launch an oral product right now in the market, and things will be very, very different for all of us. But unfortunately, this didn't happen. So now we are having a development organization that knows how to do primary care, a very big, complicated studies. We have a commercial organization that it is a powerhouse and knows how to sell stuff. And we have a manufacturing network that can make those. stuff better and faster and cheaper than anybody else and guess what we didn't have a

portfolio so it was for us extremely important to cover this gap because of bad luck of scientific bedluck with an acquisition and that's what we did with Mitzera. Now you own it for a little while have your view changed? Not at all, not at all I think I'm more and more optimistic if anything. Why are you more optimistic? Because we had the release of data post the acquisition And we knew that the Imacera has a very good weekly product. That were really certain. You can never be 100%, but we were 85, 90% certain, but that that will deliver.

But we didn't have hard evidence that a monthly product could be delivered. We knew that the pharmacokinetics support something like that. We knew from phase one early data that it should work. but we needed the phase two data, which we didn't have available when we did the acquisition. The phase two came later. And indeed, it confirmed that we do have a monthly product. We can debate, is it going to be better than Lilies, worse than Lilies, but it's going to be monthly.

Lilies and novice will be weekly. That we know now, with very high level of confidence, to the degree, of course, that science can provide us such. So that's why. You mentioned AI and China. what is happening in China in the Varmao history? I think the Chinese, when they put something in their mind as top priority, they have proven that they can deliver exceptional results.

So Chinese, they are working with a five years plan. And they had 20-25 was the 14th, a five-year plan from Mao Zetung's time. And this is where they first time spoke. that they want to develop by years 35 to 36 global players in pharmaceutical space. And to do that, they said in the first years they need to develop a biotech and improve science, et cetera. They did tremendously well.

Right now, in the nature index of ranking universities, universities, based on scientific outputs. Out of 10, the top 10 was always eight US, the usual suspects, MIT, Harvard. In 25, only one was US, Harvard. And eight were Chinese. Eight of the top 10 were Chinese in the world, based on peer review publications that they had, and the grants and the PhDs and

and all of that. So the progress that's happening is amazing from the early stages of drug discovery to regulations, to IP protections, to utilizing talents, encouraging investments, subsidies. They are moving with a speed of life. But so far they do it with us and with you, right? So you did a deal with 3S bio, which is a Chinese biotech company. Yes. We are trying to tap into the Chinese innovation. So there are a lot of things that they are developing. We are looking at them. And when we find something good, we're licensing.

But for me, this is not a long-term strategy. First of all, they won't give their molecules forever to others. They will develop their capabilities to take them all the way to the market so that they can profit from their whole value of chain. But my focus is how to become better than them. Because right now they bring a very different league. They are doing everything with half the cost and three times the speed. If you compare Pfizer and Lillian and AstraZeneca and Nordic,

one is better in something, the other is better in something else. But in general, we are all within a range of same, let's say, productivity levels, R&D, maybe one is better, commercial maybe one is better. They come, as I said, have the cost three times the speed. That's a very different league. You need to transform your companies and you have five years to do it so that you will be able to compete in a world. But they come like they did with electric vehicles,

like they did with solar panels, like they did with batteries, they will do with medicines. And how is Pfizer going to halve the costs and increase the speed? by 300%. Yeah. The best answer

or the simple answer is through transformation through technology. I think it's a good thing to say, you know, I'm going to transform myself, but it's not that you were stupid before.

It was that you didn't have technology that would allow you to do things very, very different than you are doing them right now. Now we have with AI. So transformation through technology, it is pretty much

number one.