TheCopenhagenPost
December 7th, 2015

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Ron Park is taking over from John Walsh as chairman of AmCham Denmark (photo: AmCham Denmark)

The American chamber of commerce, AmCham Denmark, has appointed a new chairman. Ron Park – who has a background in medicine, management consulting and biotechnology, and is currently serving as the general manager of the pharmaceutical company Roche – takes over from John Walsh, who has been the chairman of AmCham since March this year.

Park has been a board member of the organisation since 2014 and looks forward to contributing to its work from the chairman’s seat.

“It is with a great sense of humility I take up this position,” he said.

“AmCham has a strong history of policy work and of creating opportunities for dialogue and networking between international companies in Denmark and Danish decision-makers. I look forward to working with my many AmCham colleagues to continue to foster AmCham’s ongoing success.”

Positive clinical results boost biotech company Genmab’s share price

The shares of Genmab, a publicly-traded Danish biotech company, shot up by five percent on Monday morning following the news that a study of the company’s cancer treatment Darazalex found that the medication was effective in killing all cancer cells in a quarter of patients.

Torben Plesner, a consultant doctor at Vejle Hospital, presented the results of a study in which Darzalex was used in combination with the standard treatment for bone marrow cancer.

“The data suggests that the drug has the potential to provide a fast, profound and lasting effect in combination with standard treatments in earlier lines of treatment,” he told Børsen.

Customer satisfaction problems at Nordea

According to opinion polls by the research company Voxmeter, customer satisfaction at the Nordic region’s biggest bank Nordea has fallen by 12.1 percent since 2008. Danske Bank’s customers are also less happy than they were seven years, ago but it has only suffered a 9 percent hit.

Christian Stjer, the head of Voxmeter, told Jyllands-Posten that Nordea’s problem could be the result of poor customer communication.

“Nordea’s customers are dissatisfied with the way management are running the bank. Changes are happening that they don’t understand and aren’t getting an explanation for, and they are punishing this with higher dissatisfaction and by considering leaving the bank,” he said.

Mink pelts shoring up food and agricultural exports

After a bad year for food and agricultural exports in 2014, new figures from the agricultural and food council Landbrug og Fødevarer show that in 2015 exports increased by 1.8 billion kroner to 153.3 billion kroner, making it the second-best year in history after the record-breaking 2013.

The increase is largely due to a rise in the price of mink pelts, as pork and dairy exports have suffered a 10 percent price fall, which means that although export volumes are increasing, their value is falling.

“The markets for pork and dairy products are still hard hit by Russia’s boycott and the slowdown in exports to China. Overall, in the past few years the Danish farming and food industries have been hit by something close to the perfect storm,” Thomas Søby, a chief economist at Landbrug og Fødevarer, told Jyllands-Posten.