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Case

Astellas: Denmark is the perfect location for our Nordic headquarter

The global pharmaceutical company Astellas has gathered all corporate support functions to its Nordic and Baltic sales units in Denmark. This is owing to Denmark’s unique geography, allowing for a multicultural corporate environment with strong local understanding of all markets in the Nordic region.

The location in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, is popular among employees in the Nordic countries, since the Oresund Bridge makes the commute between Denmark and Sweden an easy ride both by train and car. Also, Copenhagen Airport has the most intercontinental, European, Scandinavian and Baltic connections of all the Scandinavian airports.

Strong local market understanding

This provides a clear commercial advantage for companies such as Astellas, providing services to the entire Nordic and Baltic region from its Nordic headquarters in Denmark.

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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.

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.

Medicon Valley offers a strong life science industry

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.

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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.

Rasmus Beedholm-Ebsen, Ph.D., CBA and Special Advisor Invest in Denmark

fact About Astellas

Astellas is one of the 20 largest pharmaceutical companies in the world with 17,500 employees worldwide, working to turn innovative science into value for patients. Prioritized therapeutic areas include urology, oncology, immunology, nephrology and neuroscience. In 2005, Astellas was founded through the merger of Yamanouchi and Fujisawa. With the Nordic office in Copenhagen, Astellas is represented in the whole Nordic region.

contact How do I establish a Nordic headquarter in Denmark?

If you want to know more about Denmark’s life science industry or doing business in Denmark, please do not hesitate to reach out to one of our dedicated advisors:
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