'Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, chief executive of the Novo Nordisk Foundation, which has the majority of voting rights in the company, described executives asking: “Why would we do such a trial with a high risk of maybe not showing anything? Maybe it’s just the anti-diabetic effect that is responsible for the benefits we’ve seen in diabetes. What if we don’t see anything in obesity, and the trial costs hundreds of millions of dollars?” 

https://www.ft.com/content/d951de90-11cc-478b-8592-8312ab9204c7