The global pharmaceutical company Astellas has gathered all corporate support functions to its Nordic and Baltic sales units in Denmark.
“In Stockholm, 90 percent of our employees would be Swedish, in Oslo they would be Norwegian, and in Finland they would be Finns. But in Copenhagen, we have employees with four Nordic nationalities, with a majority of Danes and Swedes. This makes our work environment multicultural with a strong local market understanding of all our markets – which is important, because despite the global perception that the Nordic region is one homogeneous market, there are differences between the countries,” says Anders Nordén, General Manager Nordic & Baltic Operations, Astellas.
Astellas’ Nordic headquarters in Copenhagen has approximately 60 employees, supporting local sales offices in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania within administration, finance, HR, medical and marketing. In addition to the infrastructure with Copenhagen Airport and the Oresund Bridge, Copenhagen offers a very strong life science cluster in Medicon Valley.
“Medicon Valley is one of Europe’s leading life science clusters, providing easy access to many of the specialist skills, we need to employ. And with the Danish tax scheme for researchers and highly-paid employees, we have an attractive incentive to offer foreign candidates, who we want to attract,” says Anders Nordén.
“The life science industry in Denmark has developed into a strong and competitive cluster. Denmark offers a low corporate tax rate, competitive business costs, and flexible labour market conditions. Also, in Denmark there is a well-organised and publicly financed healthcare sector that maintains a high standard with highly qualified and motivated personnel, and Denmark offers some of the best possible conditions for conducting business in the life science industry,” explains Rasmus Beedholm-Ebsen, Ph.D., CBA and Special Advisor at Invest in Denmark.
