WEBVTT
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First of all, we have to define what success means.
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Success is not accumulation of wealth.
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Success is I'm sorry, I'm going to be very simple.
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Success is being happy.
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You can't really protect nature against people.
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You have to protect it with people and maybe even for people.
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And that that movement sort of uh has gone into this notion of what sustainability actually is.
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Welcome to Decode It, the podcast where we explore how data, technology, and human insights are reshaping patient care worldwide.
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I'm Yuri Camlon, biologist dreamer and founder at Soviet Unity.
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In each episode, we decode ideas with pioneers who have helped shape the way industries think, build, and move forward.
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Today, I'm excited to welcome someone whose family name has been tied to healthcare innovation for over a century, and who has spent his own career asking what that legacy is actually for.
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Andre Hoffmann is vice-chairman of Rosh, the company, his great-great-grandfather, Prince Otzmann-Lam Roche, founded in Basel in 1896.
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In 2024, he wrote the book, The New Nature of Business, that asks us to put a real number on what we take from nature.
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In this episode, we will talk about what it means to run a 130-year-old company, how genomics and AI are reshaping healthcare from the inside, and why André believes the real risks of today require a fundamentally different definition of success.
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André, welcome.
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Thank you, Horge.
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Nice to be here.
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A pleasure.
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So, André, given uh you're a publicly well-known individual and uh your family as well is very well known.
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I thought it would be interesting for the audience that we cover on Decoded to hear a little bit about the story of the beginning of Roche, uh, which started with Fritz Hoffman La Roche, born in Basel.
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Well, thanks very much for the question.
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It's a real pleasure to be here, and it's always nice to be able to stand on the shoulder of big giants because there are, of course, a lot of things happening in the pharmaceutical industry.
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And we were in this time of history in 1896 when the company was started.
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We were in this time in history where industrialization started.
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And there were a lot of ideas which were picked up from the everyday life and tried to be standardized and manufactured in a way that was more precise and more long term.
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So the original idea for my great-grandfather was to um uh standardize the production of uh powders and potions and vials.
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You know, in those days, uh really the chemist used to go into the the back of the shop and mix up the potions and do things together in order to give to the patient.
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So uh if you were on a Monday morning and he had had a difficult Sunday, probably the potion was not the same one as the one he would do on Wednesday or on Friday.
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So this idea of standardizing came with the with the emergence of the industrial movement.
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And um uh my grandfather was my great grandfather, so he was very motivated by health because uh as a young apprentice he had been blocked in Hamburg for a couple of years, a couple of months, sorry, uh, during uh cholera pandemic.
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And uh that that this image sort of uh uh impressed him a lot.
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So um he thought that uh starting a pharmaceutical business according to modern rules at the time would allow him to treat more patients.
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Um really uh since then the company has uh stayed in Basel and has developed uh different approaches to health, which we will probably discuss in this conversation, and um uh it is now uh well established as one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in the world.
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Absolutely.
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Uh thanks for sharing uh uh how it started, and quite interesting to hear that it was already about standardization and I would say uh Swiss uh high-level quality, probably from the beginning.
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Yeah, so and and and the interesting thing, and I'm sure we will come back to that later, is that what we thought at the time was a solution is one medicine to cure all, you know, the blockbuster model.
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And now, of course, we've changed from that.
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But sorry again, you were asking.
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No, absolutely makes sense.
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No, no, absolutely, and from chemistry to biotechnology as well, obviously.
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Um, so one of the particularities of Cruz of Roche as well, uh uh not only is that uh is a very successful European-Swiss company at international level, which unfortunately is not, I would say, uh common enough.
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We would like to have more uh European and very successful large companies.
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Uh, but in addition to that, the company, from my understanding, is owned by the family members at more than 50%.
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Uh and um, if uh I'm correct, you're not shy that based on your experience, uh, this brings some long-term benefits.
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Could could you share what are your thoughts?
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Well, I I think that the the first statistic we have to look at is that we are now in 2026, so it's been a successful company for 130 years.
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And during the 130 years, um the family was majority owners.
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So I I I must disappoint some of your readers, uh, of your listeners, sorry.
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Uh it's not um uh we do not uh own 50% of the market cap, we own 50% of the votes.
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I think that makes a difference.
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Um but but but the in in the 130-year model was possible only because uh the ownership did not change in relationship to what happened to the company.
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So um we are still focused on what we can do uh for the patient, and we are uh able to reinforce the management activities in that field as much as possible.
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As you know, the healthcare industry has very long development cycles.
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We're talking about 15 years for molecule and about you know 3.2 billion uh per molecule, uh uh about three quarters for them, never make it to market.
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And so these are huge costs which uh um traditionally have to be borne by the shareholders.
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And this is of course something that's um that's uh uh long-term ownership um facilitates.
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So if you want to stay on mission, if you want to continue to do the right thing, I I strongly recommend uh a stable shareholder, in our case, a family.
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And uh we've been very successful, not that's not for work, we've been very uh uh committed to the idea of keeping the f the this together because we could see the benefit in the long term.
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I myself am the fourth generation, I've been uh the vice chair of the company for the past 30 years.
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I'm by far the longest serving member of our current board, which gives me a little bit of a perspective and perhaps a little bit of institutional memory.
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And although this is against every sort of corporate governance principle, uh you know, you're supposed to not be there if you're an insider, you're supposed to not be there for too long, it's okay because I happen to chair the corporate governance committee, so we we we sort of adapted the rules into what what you did also.
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Um so I think the benefit of stable ownership is something that is really um underestimated, especially in an environment where the last quarter seems to be counting more than anything else.
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How can you invest on a 15-year program if you have to every quarter convince your shareholders that you have increased uh profitability?
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It's just incompatible.
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Uh some of our uh competitors have uh have been very successful with that model.
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I believe that our model allows us to not only think longer term, but also to uh create teams and ideas which have a much better uh uh success rate because of the long-term thing.
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And I don't know whether it's this uh unique uh structure, ownership uh that uh enable you to make something distinct as well versus other pharma companies.
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So not only on the therapeutic area, uh Roche is very well known in oncology, neurology, immunology, and ophthalmology, but unlike other pharma companies, uh you have, in addition to the therapeutic division, a diagnostic division, which I understand as being an investment uh made maybe 20, 25, 30 years ago.
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Um why um this investment was made, and uh as you were speaking about long-term vision, investments, commitment, um, as the fact that you were the family owning uh the rights of voting for more than 50% enable you as well to combine in the same entity uh a therapeutic and a diagnostic unit?
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Yeah, I think that's a very good uh uh question, yeah.
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Because that's very much a point in case, you see.
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Um about 30 years ago, when I started uh on the company, uh we received a takeover bit from one from our neighbors.
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And I was there as a representative of my family, and I had to, oh, I mean, let's call it the right name, but from Novartis.
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Yeah.
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And um uh the idea was to create the Basel Champion.
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And and as a representative of the family, I I expressed my opinion that this was not a very good idea.
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But I did that before I was able to sort of question our family members because we were in the middle of a of a situation.
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Um, and that allowed us to kick start a process within the family, which was to ask a very simple question.
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What does ownership mean?
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You know, we are not just there because we want the dividend uh and the long-term capital appreciation, we're there as long-term stewards of a company which is focusing on health.
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What does it mean?
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It means we work for the patient and we don't work for the shareholders.
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So that that that gave us a way to sort of uh in the long term uh try to create value which would be focused on execution of the mission, and we've given ourselves a purpose.
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That purpose is doing today what the patient needs next.
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And in that purpose, we try to capture all the things that are needed for a corporation like Osh to serve the patient.
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And um, in that context, you need to also look at identification of diseases rather than just looking at pills the the the or pills or whatever you want to call it.
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I mean the the the um the idea of being just a manufacturer of molecules is not really what it's about.
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What it's about is building expertise in certain fields.
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And I I'm much more comfortable with the definition of being uh uh you know serving the patient full healthcare know-how rather than just trying to identify some molecules.
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So when you open that door, it it means how can we best uh follow disease?
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And one of the things we really needed was this notion of diagnostics.
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You know, we we talk internally about how to identify, stop, and cure.
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So we try to identify the disease by using diagnostic.
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We had a small diagnostic division at the time, but uh 26 years ago, if I'm not mistaken, we acquired another family company, Beringer Ingleheim, Bohringer Mannheim, I'm sorry.
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And and and Bohringer was then fully uh included into what Roche does.
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And it they were at the time the biggest um in vitro diagnostic company, and we've maintained that status and we keep on investing into what the thing that diagnostic can bring us.
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The idea being that um now that we have the data for diagnostic, now that we have uh the biotechnology research thanks to our partnering with Genentech over the years, etc., uh, we will now be able to use the artificial intelligence tool uh to be able to bring all this together uh in order to serve again to serve the patient.
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The the strong belief of the family is that if we do find innovative solutions, we will be successful.
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And not the opposite.
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You're not successful uh for finding solutions, you have the finding the solution makes you success.
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Absolutely.
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Um yeah, uh I'm sorry, it's it's been uh 10 minutes, and now we already talked about AI, so not with the It's fine, it's great, it's great.
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Uh this uh gives me the opportunity indeed uh to move maybe to technology.
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So you you mentioned that uh you being the the board member who was being uh the longest in the board of Rush.
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You actually joined, if I'm not mistaken, the board of Rush in 1996.
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And so over the last 30 years, obviously, you've seen a lot of evolution within the company, uh Roche, but as well uh through partnerships, acquisitions, uh you've seen a lot of evolution uh in the space of healthcare, uh, both in terms of uh technologies to develop drugs, but as well technologies to diagnose patients, technologies maybe as well to compute data.
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Um, what have been for you um the ones that really strike you uh and you believe have made uh big differences over the last 30 years?
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So uh one of the stories of um is that we have been able over the years to reinvent ourselves several times.
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It started as a company selling cough mixture and disinfectant, it then went on to become the biggest manufacturer of vitamin on the planet.
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We have uh 80% of the vitamin C.
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Uh, we then moved on to um uh uh um the benzodiacipins, I mean balium, uh, librium, etc.
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We went we then went went on to uh biotechnology, and that was the time when we really were able to sort of diversify our products, and we have started a strategic alliance with genetics, which we eventually uh fully acquired, and um there we developed these monoclonal antibodies who have been quite successful, which have been quite successful in treating cancer.
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So um, you know, uh from a base chemical company all the way to biotechnology, now the largest biotechnology company in the world, I think that's a good indication of how science uh has allowed us to, by using technology, to to move on in different things.
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Um at the same time, of course, we also uh try to understand better what is data in in health and how can we use them.
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Um close to what you are doing, FMI, Flatiron, to companies with whom we've uh we've worked over the years and who are now part of the Roche Group.
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Um we we we talked a lot about uh you know putting uh data in the cloud and putting a note about artificial intelligence that is still happening.
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Uh we just announced uh uh an acquisition um where we are going to use uh uh called Path AI, so now Roche part of the Roche Group since officially since last Monday.
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Um uh we we've optimized the idea of uh of that particular acquisition is to use AI to optimize pathology uh analysis.
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You know, the rather than having uh nice uh human beings looking at slices of tumour with very tired eyes, we try to use AI to make sense of it.
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Etc.
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etc.
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Um I I think the the the big thing that is still to come is of course the complete full use of the genomics uh capacity.
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Um we we we're very proud of the fact that we've entered the Guinness Book of Records for the quickest uh sequencing ever of a human genome with our new Axelios comp uh uh system.
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We we we can actually uh sequence a human genome in less than four hours.
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And um I I you you're gonna you're too young, but I remember very well when the the the you know it took what the first genome took three years and 10 million, 10 billion, I mean huge amounts of money.
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Now we can do it quickly, reliably, and um uh and precisely.
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And I think that's going to be a major evolution into a number of products which we which we haven't really even thought of yet.
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So you highlighted definitively uh monoclonal antibodies, right, with GeniTech.
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You highlighted uh uh genomic data, uh data themselves and AI.
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Uh and recently, indeed, uh in the genomics uh era, uh, your efforts with the launch of the Axelios.
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You mentioned that uh, you know, at worst it starts with identifying the disease, André.
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Uh obviously, in Namawa, there is a hope that one can as well follow longitudinally patients and in oncology by seeing how the natural history of cancer evolves for specific patients, eventually not only identify but intercept cancer.
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Uh, is this something that um is um uh a focused arena approach?
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Um, because in the vein of, you know, I think as well, better leveraging on patient data, the sustainable aspect as well beyond you know the ecology of the healthcare systems, in my um opinion, we don't necessarily enough leverage on patient data to help the next generation of patients.
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So are those notions as well part of the thinking when you are making your investments and your your bets basically on technologies?
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Yeah, I've uh two elements to this.
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And the first, um detecting the disease even in small quantity, um, uh, you know, when when the pathog the pathogens are in small amounts uh it is crucial to treatment uh of the patient.
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You you need to detect as early as possible because that will greatly reduce the cost.
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So so uh the idea that we can use uh with our in vivo solution, sorry, in vitro solution, uh uh some of this detecting is important that would should allow us to stop the disease developing too early.
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Cure coming coming later.
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But but um uh the thing that's important with all this generation of data is that we now have this amazingly powerful tool that artificial intelligence brings us.
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And so the company has spent quite a lot of time trying to understand how we can use AI not only for for for improving discovery of you know the folding of protein and all this uh the wonderful work that uh the Mr.
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Sabis has done in that context, but also how can we how can we uh capture better the relationship between the patient and the therapy, and how can we sort of follow it up?
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So the acquisition I mentioned I I mentioned before, um uh you know, Path AI g ga gives us uh a way of going into pathology, which is of course more sort of um in vivo type of following of tumors, and I think that that would allow us in the long term to get closer to what the patients really need.
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But for for me, the the key to the future of all this sector is of course a question of price.
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Um at some stage we will reach the capacity we we will need to adapt the the the cost of this treatment to the capacity of the system.
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And and for that, we do really need to understand better the biology of the diseases and to start earlier.
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You know, uh we were just talking about oncology.
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Uh uh the the the monoclonal antibody defined a new field and it became very competitive, and there are lots of companies uh profiling themselves in in that particular sector, which is very good news for the patient.
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But at the same time, it's also important if you want to keep a competitive edge that you bring something else to it.
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And we think that the combination of uh diagnostics and and therapy, the the the what has been called personalized healthcare in the past and now precision medicine, is something that allows us to really um yeah give a better uh success rate while decreasing the costs.
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And I think that the two elements I'm on.
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And Andre, uh this enables me now uh to move to another topic because what you have been covering about is basically as well sustainability of our healthcare systems, right?
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Uh which obviously is very important.
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Uh, population is getting older, uh, so more cancer, uh, more disorders.
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Uh, it's as well the result of the success of humanity, obviously, yeah, that uh we get older and we have those diseases.
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We have to do something out of it with technology, but in the meantime, it has to be done in a sustainable way because we have means that we have to limit as well resources, even I'm if we solid think about economical uh basically uh means.
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Beyond that, sustainability uh today is something that I think, at least in Europe, we've been hearing uh a lot about uh lately, uh, with the heat waves, uh the wildfires, especially uh in uh Bordeaux uh area recently, which highlights that eventually beyond healthcare, there are even more urgent and systemic problems to focus on.
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Um, and I know uh sustainability has been uh one of your missions in life as an individual, at least this is my sense uh from you know listening to you.
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Um but before we get to really where do you think the planet and humanity stands in terms of sustainability, can you bring us back to your youth, childhood, and explain how this in this um I would say uh consciousness of sustainability and and uh love of nature has been instilled in you?
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Well exactly, thanks very much for the question.
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It allows me to uh to identify my age, and you know, I've been doing this sort of thing for a long time.
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Uh I used to be a member, I am still a member of the Club of Rome, the limits to growth, the report published in 1975, which was very much shaped my youth.
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My father was a scientist, um, but not a biological scientist.
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His view he is he was a naturalist and in particular ornithologist.
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So we grew up in the Camargue in the south of France.
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uh which you can probably hear in our accent and um we we you know we we were surrounded by nature all the time and my father became one of the founders of the movement of conservation he was one of the founding uh members of WWF the World War Friend for Nature and um uh at at the time it was there was a realization I think from everybody that uh nature is in danger so what do we do?
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Um uh uh the the philosophy at the time was we will protect spaces the Camargue uh the Amazon uh you know the Serengeti and we will protect species uh the flamingos from the Camargue the the lions from the Serengeti etc uh the the rhinos in in Southern Africa I mean all these things and I think um over the years um uh as we went more and more into the reality of things we realized that in fact that's a bit too narrow as a definition you can't really protect nature against people you have to protect it with people and maybe even for people and um that that movement sort of uh has gone into this notion of what sustainability actually is you know we we do have a fine a fin a finite planet a model that is not uh extensible forever and so we need to treat um the the planet with the respect that it that that the life support system on earth deserves you know what when when you when you destroy something but you don't have it anymore you know extinction is forever and um in a in a in a in a single planet these questions are important so my my my my work which started with WWF I was the treasurer of the Dograph International for a number of years um uh I served a couple of presidents there and we did a lot of I think pretty exciting work but we realized that the root causes of the destruction of nature was not just the fact that uh humanity was growing which it was as well by the way but it was also the fact that we didn't really work out this interaction how can we work at the interface between nature and and and human and the more we think about it the more we realize this is in fact the essence of our life on Earth you know nature is not just the panda and the Amazon as I just said nature is the life support system on Earth.
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Why do we still try to kill the last rhinos in Africa?
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Because they have a market value and that market value is way above the protection effort that can be done locally.
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So we need to find a new system which allows us to create this uh this this uh this new balance between human and nature and and that's very much the subject of of the of the book that I wrote two years ago which I would be happy to go into into later but when we when you just talk about um uh uh uh about uh my activity in terms of conservation I am not a scientist I'm not a conservationist I'm just a pragmatist we we we need to actually realize that at the moment we are consuming more than we own and every single day we destroy a bit more of the planet and it and there's no replacement so it's not even a question of uh beliefs it's not even a question of ethics it's a question of just business sustainability what are we going to do when there will be no nature left absolutely and uh as I was listening to you uh I was thinking about a comic I would read as a child very simple but Yakari uh living in uh uh uh the American continent and basically taking what they had to take in nature but living with nature right so so yeah we discussed about some of your activities intent being one of those um and you mentioned a couple of others but indeed you wrote a very important book uh in 2024 The New Nature of Business and in that book you're speaking about a new way of doing accountability book accountability right or book accounting can you explain us what this is about well um yeah thank you for the question and I spent quite a lot of time trying to understand a little bit what we've just discussed before how can we diminish the impact of human on the planet and it dawned on me that um you know at the at the at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution or maybe a bit later in in the in the 70s when uh Milton Friedman got his Nobel Prize in 1976 for the very simple work the business of business is business um in other words we need to uh companies need to be profitable before and and and and after you know it aren't only that that particular short-term profit maximization mantra was responsible for a number of choices uh made by companies which did not take into account the consequences of their actions so this is not uh bad or dirty or or or immoral it's just simply amoral you know nobody thought about it because that wasn't the job I went to business school and I I was I was told your job is to increase shareholder value and dividends and that's it.
00:26:54.000 --> 00:26:56.480
And you know it's a system that worked fantastically well.
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We made a lot of people come out of poverty and we spread a lot of prosperity around with that model.
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It's worked.
00:27:03.359 --> 00:27:15.440
But now we can see it's no longer really fit for purpose because there are consequences to what we do which Milton Friedman used to call externalities and which he just pushed out for somebody else to deal with.
00:27:15.759 --> 00:27:22.000
And I think today it's important that we understand when we do business what are the consequences of our deals.
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And so I'm proposing that we should put in place an accounting a new accounting system an accounting system that will not just look at financial flows but that will also look at the impact you're having on the three big capitals the social capital you know us the human capital you me the neighbor um and nature nature being the national capital and it's the interdependency between these three dimensions which will give us the produced capital which is the only one you measure at the moment.
00:27:51.519 --> 00:28:00.319
So the principle becomes if you produce capital while ignoring one of the three big capitals the three first capitals well it's not going to be sustainable.
00:28:00.559 --> 00:28:12.559
In other words if I need to cut the forest restore nature in order to make pe to give jobs to people and to eventually bring the benefit of that wood to the population I am not going to be able to do that forever.
00:28:12.880 --> 00:28:24.400
Equally if I just privilege nature by by creating a serengeti and keeping the people out well the social the the the the neglect of the social element means that it's not sustainable either.
00:28:24.559 --> 00:28:27.440
The day the protection stops uh everybody will move in.
00:28:27.599 --> 00:28:40.000
So so you need to really sort of understand how you can construct this triangular model and on the principle that they taught me at business school you manage what you measure um we we we need to be able to put a number to it.
00:28:40.079 --> 00:28:44.960
So luckily a number of companies a number of organizations are starting to do more and more of that work.
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The IFRS Foundation which is the reporting system I mentioned numbers in Europe has uh started uh an instrument called the ISB the International Sustainability Standard Board which which which will provide uh protocols to measure the impact so that I think is one important bit.
00:29:04.160 --> 00:29:10.000
The second bit which we explore in the book is this idea of saying well what price is nature?
00:29:10.160 --> 00:29:16.319
You know um if I look at a tree in front of my house just at the moment looking across the window there is a tree.
00:29:16.480 --> 00:29:32.000
If I cut that tree it will be it's we it will be worth 40 kilos of wood because that's how I put it in my book yeah my my but in fact it's alive and an alive tree is incredibly more useful to society than a dead tree.
00:29:32.079 --> 00:29:47.039
You know it either it uh either there are birds in there there's biodiversity in the insects they it absorbs carbon it's connected to other trees you know and and our current accounting system does not allow us to capture the value of life.
00:29:47.200 --> 00:29:56.240
So we take decisions based on extraction and not on regeneration which I think is the next thing to the next step for a sustainable economy.
00:29:56.400 --> 00:30:16.480
So the aim of the book when I say the new nature of business is to create sustainable prosperity prosperity because we need it obviously the eight and a half billion people on the planet need access to to prosperity but in a way that will allow us to continue to deliver this in you know the proper term of sustainability.
00:30:16.720 --> 00:30:20.559
And and the third bit of the of the book is um uh you know who's going to do that?
00:30:20.799 --> 00:30:31.599
Yes where are we going to find people who are sort of sufficiently humble to accept that the current system doesn't work even if they have been successful at doing it and how they're going to find the courage to change.
00:30:32.000 --> 00:31:05.759
Absolutely so that being my question that you already gave us some hints with uh some efforts from the IFRS as well uh which you know I think uh sometimes yeah I I hope uh may surprise you may surprise others but that politics and regulators may as well put more boundaries because we are all humans and uh you know we all have excuses of not doing things as well uh but this is where maybe collectively we need to as it happens sometimes in Switzerland both have a law and then uh you know follow standards.
00:31:06.079 --> 00:31:11.680
But but you and I in business we know capital moves only for two reasons.
00:31:11.920 --> 00:31:17.440
Reason number one profitability so we invest in being profitable and reason number two regulation.
00:31:17.680 --> 00:31:22.720
We will you know we will not do something that's illegal we will not we we will not go against the law.
00:31:22.960 --> 00:32:58.160
And if you if you if profitability doesn't get us there which is the idea of uh of of new accounting then we are going to have to to to to depend on on politics on regulators on on laws and and but you know the public private partnership is a good concept I just don't see it played out yeah absolutely uh you've been to some extent as well uh highlighting uh something that uh that that that triggers me question Andre so you mentioned prosperity right and prosperity of all and for long term uh you are obviously uh uh a very wealthy individual uh given your family story but remain very humble grounded simple uh very engaged and uh you believe uh strongly on the distribution of wealth uh why is that key and what is the risk around the world today well in in the in in the book of course we address uh the this this this this notion of um uh inequality biggest factor of frustration uh in the system i mean i if you look at um um well first of all we have to define what success means success is not accumulation of wealth success is i'm sorry i'm going to be very simple success is being happy yeah you you're you're you and and being happy on your own in your Mercedes drinking d'un perignon is is is not fun i mean I I I I don't I don't know about how you spend your free times but I know that for me it's important to be with people and to contribute to society to to make to to to to be recognized well I don't even have to be recognized but to be participating to to what's happening around the place.
00:32:58.559 --> 00:33:12.160
You know going for instance to go and help our friend in the Gironde who are trying to stop this this this big fire at the moment I mean we cannot say oh not my folks nothing to do with me let's push it over so at some stage we we we need to participate.
00:33:12.400 --> 00:33:44.480
And yes uh a successful company like Roche in family ownership since 130 years has meant an accumulation of wealth but um I I spend a lot of of my activities trying to recycle some of this uh of of this wealth into something that can really make a difference and and for me that is a better road to success than the latest Louis Vuitton bag or although it's it's not quite true I like drinking good wine but I mean you know it it's just a it it's just a continuum that has to go into our daily lives.
00:33:44.640 --> 00:34:00.400
We need to make sure that what we contribute uh makes a difference to the people around us and of course we all have a toolbox mine is a bit bit bigger thanks to Fritz Hoffmann Laroche mine is a bit bigger than the neighbors and and you know it would be foolish to just ignore it.
00:34:00.720 --> 00:35:39.760
Absolutely thank you uh André with these last words and I know they're really genuine uh coming from you uh happiness uh is important the feeling of contributing to something uh in society with whatever toolbox we have ideally and uh you know my father was telling and that's something I use as well now that uh uh to together alone we go faster but together we go further and I think uh that's exactly what what I heard in your in your mouth right now absolutely so andrew thank you for joining me on Decodit today was a real pleasure and what I love the most is that you never separate the two questions that met the most how do we build well and and who do we build for four generations of mental to left to know what in what less team do we mean for the company but also for the planet but what day do we mean what you enter to make a question and what technically makes a life good in a conversation and be net internet reality tool enjoy this conversation you can think of them if you enjoy ETP and make photos creative and we continue meeting the leaders and builders shaping the future of healthcare technology in AI and you recommend thank you for listening and let's keep moving forward
00:00:00.239 --> 00:00:02.000
First of all, we have to define what success means.
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Success is not accumulation of wealth.
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Success is I'm sorry, I'm going to be very simple.
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Success is being happy.
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You can't really protect nature against people.
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You have to protect it with people and maybe even for people.
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And that that movement sort of uh has gone into this notion of what sustainability actually is.
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Welcome to Decode It, the podcast where we explore how data, technology, and human insights are reshaping patient care worldwide.
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I'm Yuri Camlon, biologist dreamer and founder at Soviet Unity.
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In each episode, we decode ideas with pioneers who have helped shape the way industries think, build, and move forward.
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Today, I'm excited to welcome someone whose family name has been tied to healthcare innovation for over a century, and who has spent his own career asking what that legacy is actually for.
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Andre Hoffmann is vice-chairman of Rosh, the company, his great-great-grandfather, Prince Otzmann-Lam Roche, founded in Basel in 1896.
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In 2024, he wrote the book, The New Nature of Business, that asks us to put a real number on what we take from nature.
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In this episode, we will talk about what it means to run a 130-year-old company, how genomics and AI are reshaping healthcare from the inside, and why André believes the real risks of today require a fundamentally different definition of success.
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André, welcome.
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Thank you, Horge.
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Nice to be here.
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A pleasure.
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So, André, given uh you're a publicly well-known individual and uh your family as well is very well known.
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I thought it would be interesting for the audience that we cover on Decoded to hear a little bit about the story of the beginning of Roche, uh, which started with Fritz Hoffman La Roche, born in Basel.
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Well, thanks very much for the question.
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It's a real pleasure to be here, and it's always nice to be able to stand on the shoulder of big giants because there are, of course, a lot of things happening in the pharmaceutical industry.
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And we were in this time of history in 1896 when the company was started.
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We were in this time in history where industrialization started.
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And there were a lot of ideas which were picked up from the everyday life and tried to be standardized and manufactured in a way that was more precise and more long term.
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So the original idea for my great-grandfather was to um uh standardize the production of uh powders and potions and vials.
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You know, in those days, uh really the chemist used to go into the the back of the shop and mix up the potions and do things together in order to give to the patient.
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So uh if you were on a Monday morning and he had had a difficult Sunday, probably the potion was not the same one as the one he would do on Wednesday or on Friday.
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So this idea of standardizing came with the with the emergence of the industrial movement.
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And um uh my grandfather was my great grandfather, so he was very motivated by health because uh as a young apprentice he had been blocked in Hamburg for a couple of years, a couple of months, sorry, uh, during uh cholera pandemic.
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And uh that that this image sort of uh uh impressed him a lot.
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So um he thought that uh starting a pharmaceutical business according to modern rules at the time would allow him to treat more patients.
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Um really uh since then the company has uh stayed in Basel and has developed uh different approaches to health, which we will probably discuss in this conversation, and um uh it is now uh well established as one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in the world.
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Absolutely.
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Uh thanks for sharing uh uh how it started, and quite interesting to hear that it was already about standardization and I would say uh Swiss uh high-level quality, probably from the beginning.
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Yeah, so and and and the interesting thing, and I'm sure we will come back to that later, is that what we thought at the time was a solution is one medicine to cure all, you know, the blockbuster model.
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And now, of course, we've changed from that.
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But sorry again, you were asking.
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No, absolutely makes sense.
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No, no, absolutely, and from chemistry to biotechnology as well, obviously.
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Um, so one of the particularities of Cruz of Roche as well, uh uh not only is that uh is a very successful European-Swiss company at international level, which unfortunately is not, I would say, uh common enough.
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We would like to have more uh European and very successful large companies.
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Uh, but in addition to that, the company, from my understanding, is owned by the family members at more than 50%.
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Uh and um, if uh I'm correct, you're not shy that based on your experience, uh, this brings some long-term benefits.
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Could could you share what are your thoughts?
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Well, I I think that the the first statistic we have to look at is that we are now in 2026, so it's been a successful company for 130 years.
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And during the 130 years, um the family was majority owners.
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So I I I must disappoint some of your readers, uh, of your listeners, sorry.
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Uh it's not um uh we do not uh own 50% of the market cap, we own 50% of the votes.
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I think that makes a difference.
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Um but but but the in in the 130-year model was possible only because uh the ownership did not change in relationship to what happened to the company.
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So um we are still focused on what we can do uh for the patient, and we are uh able to reinforce the management activities in that field as much as possible.
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As you know, the healthcare industry has very long development cycles.
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We're talking about 15 years for molecule and about you know 3.2 billion uh per molecule, uh uh about three quarters for them, never make it to market.
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And so these are huge costs which uh um traditionally have to be borne by the shareholders.
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And this is of course something that's um that's uh uh long-term ownership um facilitates.
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So if you want to stay on mission, if you want to continue to do the right thing, I I strongly recommend uh a stable shareholder, in our case, a family.
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And uh we've been very successful, not that's not for work, we've been very uh uh committed to the idea of keeping the f the this together because we could see the benefit in the long term.
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I myself am the fourth generation, I've been uh the vice chair of the company for the past 30 years.
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I'm by far the longest serving member of our current board, which gives me a little bit of a perspective and perhaps a little bit of institutional memory.
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And although this is against every sort of corporate governance principle, uh you know, you're supposed to not be there if you're an insider, you're supposed to not be there for too long, it's okay because I happen to chair the corporate governance committee, so we we we sort of adapted the rules into what what you did also.
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Um so I think the benefit of stable ownership is something that is really um underestimated, especially in an environment where the last quarter seems to be counting more than anything else.
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How can you invest on a 15-year program if you have to every quarter convince your shareholders that you have increased uh profitability?
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It's just incompatible.
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Uh some of our uh competitors have uh have been very successful with that model.
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I believe that our model allows us to not only think longer term, but also to uh create teams and ideas which have a much better uh uh success rate because of the long-term thing.
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And I don't know whether it's this uh unique uh structure, ownership uh that uh enable you to make something distinct as well versus other pharma companies.
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So not only on the therapeutic area, uh Roche is very well known in oncology, neurology, immunology, and ophthalmology, but unlike other pharma companies, uh you have, in addition to the therapeutic division, a diagnostic division, which I understand as being an investment uh made maybe 20, 25, 30 years ago.
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Um why um this investment was made, and uh as you were speaking about long-term vision, investments, commitment, um, as the fact that you were the family owning uh the rights of voting for more than 50% enable you as well to combine in the same entity uh a therapeutic and a diagnostic unit?
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Yeah, I think that's a very good uh uh question, yeah.
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Because that's very much a point in case, you see.
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Um about 30 years ago, when I started uh on the company, uh we received a takeover bit from one from our neighbors.
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And I was there as a representative of my family, and I had to, oh, I mean, let's call it the right name, but from Novartis.
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Yeah.
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And um uh the idea was to create the Basel Champion.
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And and as a representative of the family, I I expressed my opinion that this was not a very good idea.
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But I did that before I was able to sort of question our family members because we were in the middle of a of a situation.
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Um, and that allowed us to kick start a process within the family, which was to ask a very simple question.
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What does ownership mean?
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You know, we are not just there because we want the dividend uh and the long-term capital appreciation, we're there as long-term stewards of a company which is focusing on health.
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What does it mean?
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It means we work for the patient and we don't work for the shareholders.
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So that that that gave us a way to sort of uh in the long term uh try to create value which would be focused on execution of the mission, and we've given ourselves a purpose.
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That purpose is doing today what the patient needs next.
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And in that purpose, we try to capture all the things that are needed for a corporation like Osh to serve the patient.
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And um, in that context, you need to also look at identification of diseases rather than just looking at pills the the the or pills or whatever you want to call it.
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I mean the the the um the idea of being just a manufacturer of molecules is not really what it's about.
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What it's about is building expertise in certain fields.
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And I I'm much more comfortable with the definition of being uh uh you know serving the patient full healthcare know-how rather than just trying to identify some molecules.
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So when you open that door, it it means how can we best uh follow disease?
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And one of the things we really needed was this notion of diagnostics.
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You know, we we talk internally about how to identify, stop, and cure.
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So we try to identify the disease by using diagnostic.
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We had a small diagnostic division at the time, but uh 26 years ago, if I'm not mistaken, we acquired another family company, Beringer Ingleheim, Bohringer Mannheim, I'm sorry.
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And and and Bohringer was then fully uh included into what Roche does.
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And it they were at the time the biggest um in vitro diagnostic company, and we've maintained that status and we keep on investing into what the thing that diagnostic can bring us.
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The idea being that um now that we have the data for diagnostic, now that we have uh the biotechnology research thanks to our partnering with Genentech over the years, etc., uh, we will now be able to use the artificial intelligence tool uh to be able to bring all this together uh in order to serve again to serve the patient.
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The the strong belief of the family is that if we do find innovative solutions, we will be successful.
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And not the opposite.
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You're not successful uh for finding solutions, you have the finding the solution makes you success.
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Absolutely.
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Um yeah, uh I'm sorry, it's it's been uh 10 minutes, and now we already talked about AI, so not with the It's fine, it's great, it's great.
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Uh this uh gives me the opportunity indeed uh to move maybe to technology.
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So you you mentioned that uh you being the the board member who was being uh the longest in the board of Rush.
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You actually joined, if I'm not mistaken, the board of Rush in 1996.
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And so over the last 30 years, obviously, you've seen a lot of evolution within the company, uh Roche, but as well uh through partnerships, acquisitions, uh you've seen a lot of evolution uh in the space of healthcare, uh, both in terms of uh technologies to develop drugs, but as well technologies to diagnose patients, technologies maybe as well to compute data.
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Um, what have been for you um the ones that really strike you uh and you believe have made uh big differences over the last 30 years?
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So uh one of the stories of um is that we have been able over the years to reinvent ourselves several times.
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It started as a company selling cough mixture and disinfectant, it then went on to become the biggest manufacturer of vitamin on the planet.
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We have uh 80% of the vitamin C.
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Uh, we then moved on to um uh uh um the benzodiacipins, I mean balium, uh, librium, etc.
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We went we then went went on to uh biotechnology, and that was the time when we really were able to sort of diversify our products, and we have started a strategic alliance with genetics, which we eventually uh fully acquired, and um there we developed these monoclonal antibodies who have been quite successful, which have been quite successful in treating cancer.
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So um, you know, uh from a base chemical company all the way to biotechnology, now the largest biotechnology company in the world, I think that's a good indication of how science uh has allowed us to, by using technology, to to move on in different things.
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Um at the same time, of course, we also uh try to understand better what is data in in health and how can we use them.
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Um close to what you are doing, FMI, Flatiron, to companies with whom we've uh we've worked over the years and who are now part of the Roche Group.
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Um we we we talked a lot about uh you know putting uh data in the cloud and putting a note about artificial intelligence that is still happening.
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Uh we just announced uh uh an acquisition um where we are going to use uh uh called Path AI, so now Roche part of the Roche Group since officially since last Monday.
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Um uh we we've optimized the idea of uh of that particular acquisition is to use AI to optimize pathology uh analysis.
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You know, the rather than having uh nice uh human beings looking at slices of tumour with very tired eyes, we try to use AI to make sense of it.
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Etc.
00:15:24.000 --> 00:15:24.320
etc.
00:15:24.559 --> 00:15:31.919
Um I I think the the the big thing that is still to come is of course the complete full use of the genomics uh capacity.
00:15:32.320 --> 00:15:43.200
Um we we we're very proud of the fact that we've entered the Guinness Book of Records for the quickest uh sequencing ever of a human genome with our new Axelios comp uh uh system.
00:15:43.519 --> 00:15:48.480
We we we can actually uh sequence a human genome in less than four hours.
00:15:48.720 --> 00:16:00.879
And um I I you you're gonna you're too young, but I remember very well when the the the you know it took what the first genome took three years and 10 million, 10 billion, I mean huge amounts of money.
00:16:01.039 --> 00:16:05.519
Now we can do it quickly, reliably, and um uh and precisely.
00:16:05.759 --> 00:16:11.679
And I think that's going to be a major evolution into a number of products which we which we haven't really even thought of yet.
00:16:12.000 --> 00:16:17.840
So you highlighted definitively uh monoclonal antibodies, right, with GeniTech.
00:16:18.000 --> 00:16:23.919
You highlighted uh uh genomic data, uh data themselves and AI.
00:16:24.240 --> 00:16:31.200
Uh and recently, indeed, uh in the genomics uh era, uh, your efforts with the launch of the Axelios.
00:16:31.519 --> 00:16:37.440
You mentioned that uh, you know, at worst it starts with identifying the disease, André.
00:16:38.000 --> 00:16:55.120
Uh obviously, in Namawa, there is a hope that one can as well follow longitudinally patients and in oncology by seeing how the natural history of cancer evolves for specific patients, eventually not only identify but intercept cancer.
00:16:55.360 --> 00:17:01.759
Uh, is this something that um is um uh a focused arena approach?
00:17:02.080 --> 00:17:20.799
Um, because in the vein of, you know, I think as well, better leveraging on patient data, the sustainable aspect as well beyond you know the ecology of the healthcare systems, in my um opinion, we don't necessarily enough leverage on patient data to help the next generation of patients.
00:17:20.960 --> 00:17:28.720
So are those notions as well part of the thinking when you are making your investments and your your bets basically on technologies?
00:17:29.279 --> 00:17:31.599
Yeah, I've uh two elements to this.
00:17:31.680 --> 00:17:43.359
And the first, um detecting the disease even in small quantity, um, uh, you know, when when the pathog the pathogens are in small amounts uh it is crucial to treatment uh of the patient.
00:17:43.759 --> 00:17:48.240
You you need to detect as early as possible because that will greatly reduce the cost.
00:17:48.720 --> 00:18:01.359
So so uh the idea that we can use uh with our in vivo solution, sorry, in vitro solution, uh uh some of this detecting is important that would should allow us to stop the disease developing too early.
00:18:01.759 --> 00:18:03.200
Cure coming coming later.
00:18:03.519 --> 00:18:13.119
But but um uh the thing that's important with all this generation of data is that we now have this amazingly powerful tool that artificial intelligence brings us.
00:18:13.359 --> 00:18:25.920
And so the company has spent quite a lot of time trying to understand how we can use AI not only for for for improving discovery of you know the folding of protein and all this uh the wonderful work that uh the Mr.
00:18:26.160 --> 00:18:35.519
Sabis has done in that context, but also how can we how can we uh capture better the relationship between the patient and the therapy, and how can we sort of follow it up?
00:18:35.680 --> 00:18:54.079
So the acquisition I mentioned I I mentioned before, um uh you know, Path AI g ga gives us uh a way of going into pathology, which is of course more sort of um in vivo type of following of tumors, and I think that that would allow us in the long term to get closer to what the patients really need.
00:18:54.960 --> 00:19:00.559
But for for me, the the key to the future of all this sector is of course a question of price.
00:19:00.960 --> 00:19:10.160
Um at some stage we will reach the capacity we we will need to adapt the the the cost of this treatment to the capacity of the system.
00:19:10.559 --> 00:19:16.319
And and for that, we do really need to understand better the biology of the diseases and to start earlier.
00:19:16.559 --> 00:19:19.200
You know, uh we were just talking about oncology.
00:19:19.519 --> 00:19:33.039
Uh uh the the the monoclonal antibody defined a new field and it became very competitive, and there are lots of companies uh profiling themselves in in that particular sector, which is very good news for the patient.
00:19:33.200 --> 00:19:38.240
But at the same time, it's also important if you want to keep a competitive edge that you bring something else to it.
00:19:38.480 --> 00:19:55.920
And we think that the combination of uh diagnostics and and therapy, the the the what has been called personalized healthcare in the past and now precision medicine, is something that allows us to really um yeah give a better uh success rate while decreasing the costs.
00:19:56.000 --> 00:19:58.160
And I think that the two elements I'm on.
00:19:59.119 --> 00:20:08.880
And Andre, uh this enables me now uh to move to another topic because what you have been covering about is basically as well sustainability of our healthcare systems, right?
00:20:09.039 --> 00:20:10.880
Uh which obviously is very important.
00:20:11.039 --> 00:20:16.400
Uh, population is getting older, uh, so more cancer, uh, more disorders.
00:20:16.480 --> 00:20:22.559
Uh, it's as well the result of the success of humanity, obviously, yeah, that uh we get older and we have those diseases.
00:20:22.720 --> 00:20:37.200
We have to do something out of it with technology, but in the meantime, it has to be done in a sustainable way because we have means that we have to limit as well resources, even I'm if we solid think about economical uh basically uh means.
00:20:37.440 --> 00:21:01.039
Beyond that, sustainability uh today is something that I think, at least in Europe, we've been hearing uh a lot about uh lately, uh, with the heat waves, uh the wildfires, especially uh in uh Bordeaux uh area recently, which highlights that eventually beyond healthcare, there are even more urgent and systemic problems to focus on.
00:21:01.279 --> 00:21:10.880
Um, and I know uh sustainability has been uh one of your missions in life as an individual, at least this is my sense uh from you know listening to you.
00:21:11.119 --> 00:21:33.039
Um but before we get to really where do you think the planet and humanity stands in terms of sustainability, can you bring us back to your youth, childhood, and explain how this in this um I would say uh consciousness of sustainability and and uh love of nature has been instilled in you?
00:21:33.279 --> 00:21:34.720
Well exactly, thanks very much for the question.
00:21:34.799 --> 00:21:40.559
It allows me to uh to identify my age, and you know, I've been doing this sort of thing for a long time.
00:21:40.720 --> 00:21:48.960
Uh I used to be a member, I am still a member of the Club of Rome, the limits to growth, the report published in 1975, which was very much shaped my youth.
00:21:49.200 --> 00:21:53.119
My father was a scientist, um, but not a biological scientist.
00:21:53.279 --> 00:21:56.880
His view he is he was a naturalist and in particular ornithologist.
00:21:57.039 --> 00:21:59.599
So we grew up in the Camargue in the south of France.
00:22:00.079 --> 00:22:23.039
uh which you can probably hear in our accent and um we we you know we we were surrounded by nature all the time and my father became one of the founders of the movement of conservation he was one of the founding uh members of WWF the World War Friend for Nature and um uh at at the time it was there was a realization I think from everybody that uh nature is in danger so what do we do?
00:22:23.200 --> 00:24:12.000
Um uh uh the the philosophy at the time was we will protect spaces the Camargue uh the Amazon uh you know the Serengeti and we will protect species uh the flamingos from the Camargue the the lions from the Serengeti etc uh the the rhinos in in Southern Africa I mean all these things and I think um over the years um uh as we went more and more into the reality of things we realized that in fact that's a bit too narrow as a definition you can't really protect nature against people you have to protect it with people and maybe even for people and um that that movement sort of uh has gone into this notion of what sustainability actually is you know we we do have a fine a fin a finite planet a model that is not uh extensible forever and so we need to treat um the the planet with the respect that it that that the life support system on earth deserves you know what when when you when you destroy something but you don't have it anymore you know extinction is forever and um in a in a in a in a single planet these questions are important so my my my my work which started with WWF I was the treasurer of the Dograph International for a number of years um uh I served a couple of presidents there and we did a lot of I think pretty exciting work but we realized that the root causes of the destruction of nature was not just the fact that uh humanity was growing which it was as well by the way but it was also the fact that we didn't really work out this interaction how can we work at the interface between nature and and and human and the more we think about it the more we realize this is in fact the essence of our life on Earth you know nature is not just the panda and the Amazon as I just said nature is the life support system on Earth.
00:24:12.880 --> 00:24:16.000
Why do we still try to kill the last rhinos in Africa?
00:24:16.160 --> 00:24:21.839
Because they have a market value and that market value is way above the protection effort that can be done locally.
00:24:22.400 --> 00:26:53.759
So we need to find a new system which allows us to create this uh this this uh this new balance between human and nature and and that's very much the subject of of the of the book that I wrote two years ago which I would be happy to go into into later but when we when you just talk about um uh uh uh about uh my activity in terms of conservation I am not a scientist I'm not a conservationist I'm just a pragmatist we we we need to actually realize that at the moment we are consuming more than we own and every single day we destroy a bit more of the planet and it and there's no replacement so it's not even a question of uh beliefs it's not even a question of ethics it's a question of just business sustainability what are we going to do when there will be no nature left absolutely and uh as I was listening to you uh I was thinking about a comic I would read as a child very simple but Yakari uh living in uh uh uh the American continent and basically taking what they had to take in nature but living with nature right so so yeah we discussed about some of your activities intent being one of those um and you mentioned a couple of others but indeed you wrote a very important book uh in 2024 The New Nature of Business and in that book you're speaking about a new way of doing accountability book accountability right or book accounting can you explain us what this is about well um yeah thank you for the question and I spent quite a lot of time trying to understand a little bit what we've just discussed before how can we diminish the impact of human on the planet and it dawned on me that um you know at the at the at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution or maybe a bit later in in the in the 70s when uh Milton Friedman got his Nobel Prize in 1976 for the very simple work the business of business is business um in other words we need to uh companies need to be profitable before and and and and after you know it aren't only that that particular short-term profit maximization mantra was responsible for a number of choices uh made by companies which did not take into account the consequences of their actions so this is not uh bad or dirty or or or immoral it's just simply amoral you know nobody thought about it because that wasn't the job I went to business school and I I was I was told your job is to increase shareholder value and dividends and that's it.
00:26:54.000 --> 00:26:56.480
And you know it's a system that worked fantastically well.
00:26:56.960 --> 00:27:02.400
We made a lot of people come out of poverty and we spread a lot of prosperity around with that model.
00:27:02.480 --> 00:27:03.200
It's worked.
00:27:03.359 --> 00:27:15.440
But now we can see it's no longer really fit for purpose because there are consequences to what we do which Milton Friedman used to call externalities and which he just pushed out for somebody else to deal with.
00:27:15.759 --> 00:27:22.000
And I think today it's important that we understand when we do business what are the consequences of our deals.
00:27:22.559 --> 00:27:51.200
And so I'm proposing that we should put in place an accounting a new accounting system an accounting system that will not just look at financial flows but that will also look at the impact you're having on the three big capitals the social capital you know us the human capital you me the neighbor um and nature nature being the national capital and it's the interdependency between these three dimensions which will give us the produced capital which is the only one you measure at the moment.
00:27:51.519 --> 00:28:00.319
So the principle becomes if you produce capital while ignoring one of the three big capitals the three first capitals well it's not going to be sustainable.
00:28:00.559 --> 00:28:12.559
In other words if I need to cut the forest restore nature in order to make pe to give jobs to people and to eventually bring the benefit of that wood to the population I am not going to be able to do that forever.
00:28:12.880 --> 00:28:24.400
Equally if I just privilege nature by by creating a serengeti and keeping the people out well the social the the the the neglect of the social element means that it's not sustainable either.
00:28:24.559 --> 00:28:27.440
The day the protection stops uh everybody will move in.
00:28:27.599 --> 00:28:40.000
So so you need to really sort of understand how you can construct this triangular model and on the principle that they taught me at business school you manage what you measure um we we we need to be able to put a number to it.
00:28:40.079 --> 00:28:44.960
So luckily a number of companies a number of organizations are starting to do more and more of that work.
00:28:45.440 --> 00:29:04.000
The IFRS Foundation which is the reporting system I mentioned numbers in Europe has uh started uh an instrument called the ISB the International Sustainability Standard Board which which which will provide uh protocols to measure the impact so that I think is one important bit.
00:29:04.160 --> 00:29:10.000
The second bit which we explore in the book is this idea of saying well what price is nature?
00:29:10.160 --> 00:29:16.319
You know um if I look at a tree in front of my house just at the moment looking across the window there is a tree.
00:29:16.480 --> 00:29:32.000
If I cut that tree it will be it's we it will be worth 40 kilos of wood because that's how I put it in my book yeah my my but in fact it's alive and an alive tree is incredibly more useful to society than a dead tree.
00:29:32.079 --> 00:29:47.039
You know it either it uh either there are birds in there there's biodiversity in the insects they it absorbs carbon it's connected to other trees you know and and our current accounting system does not allow us to capture the value of life.
00:29:47.200 --> 00:29:56.240
So we take decisions based on extraction and not on regeneration which I think is the next thing to the next step for a sustainable economy.
00:29:56.400 --> 00:30:16.480
So the aim of the book when I say the new nature of business is to create sustainable prosperity prosperity because we need it obviously the eight and a half billion people on the planet need access to to prosperity but in a way that will allow us to continue to deliver this in you know the proper term of sustainability.
00:30:16.720 --> 00:30:20.559
And and the third bit of the of the book is um uh you know who's going to do that?
00:30:20.799 --> 00:30:31.599
Yes where are we going to find people who are sort of sufficiently humble to accept that the current system doesn't work even if they have been successful at doing it and how they're going to find the courage to change.
00:30:32.000 --> 00:31:05.759
Absolutely so that being my question that you already gave us some hints with uh some efforts from the IFRS as well uh which you know I think uh sometimes yeah I I hope uh may surprise you may surprise others but that politics and regulators may as well put more boundaries because we are all humans and uh you know we all have excuses of not doing things as well uh but this is where maybe collectively we need to as it happens sometimes in Switzerland both have a law and then uh you know follow standards.
00:31:06.079 --> 00:31:11.680
But but you and I in business we know capital moves only for two reasons.
00:31:11.920 --> 00:31:17.440
Reason number one profitability so we invest in being profitable and reason number two regulation.
00:31:17.680 --> 00:31:22.720
We will you know we will not do something that's illegal we will not we we will not go against the law.
00:31:22.960 --> 00:32:58.160
And if you if you if profitability doesn't get us there which is the idea of uh of of new accounting then we are going to have to to to to depend on on politics on regulators on on laws and and but you know the public private partnership is a good concept I just don't see it played out yeah absolutely uh you've been to some extent as well uh highlighting uh something that uh that that that triggers me question Andre so you mentioned prosperity right and prosperity of all and for long term uh you are obviously uh uh a very wealthy individual uh given your family story but remain very humble grounded simple uh very engaged and uh you believe uh strongly on the distribution of wealth uh why is that key and what is the risk around the world today well in in the in in the book of course we address uh the this this this this notion of um uh inequality biggest factor of frustration uh in the system i mean i if you look at um um well first of all we have to define what success means success is not accumulation of wealth success is i'm sorry i'm going to be very simple success is being happy yeah you you're you're you and and being happy on your own in your Mercedes drinking d'un perignon is is is not fun i mean I I I I don't I don't know about how you spend your free times but I know that for me it's important to be with people and to contribute to society to to make to to to to be recognized well I don't even have to be recognized but to be participating to to what's happening around the place.
00:32:58.559 --> 00:33:12.160
You know going for instance to go and help our friend in the Gironde who are trying to stop this this this big fire at the moment I mean we cannot say oh not my folks nothing to do with me let's push it over so at some stage we we we need to participate.
00:33:12.400 --> 00:33:44.480
And yes uh a successful company like Roche in family ownership since 130 years has meant an accumulation of wealth but um I I spend a lot of of my activities trying to recycle some of this uh of of this wealth into something that can really make a difference and and for me that is a better road to success than the latest Louis Vuitton bag or although it's it's not quite true I like drinking good wine but I mean you know it it's just a it it's just a continuum that has to go into our daily lives.
00:33:44.640 --> 00:34:00.400
We need to make sure that what we contribute uh makes a difference to the people around us and of course we all have a toolbox mine is a bit bit bigger thanks to Fritz Hoffmann Laroche mine is a bit bigger than the neighbors and and you know it would be foolish to just ignore it.
00:34:00.720 --> 00:35:39.760
Absolutely thank you uh André with these last words and I know they're really genuine uh coming from you uh happiness uh is important the feeling of contributing to something uh in society with whatever toolbox we have ideally and uh you know my father was telling and that's something I use as well now that uh uh to together alone we go faster but together we go further and I think uh that's exactly what what I heard in your in your mouth right now absolutely so andrew thank you for joining me on Decodit today was a real pleasure and what I love the most is that you never separate the two questions that met the most how do we build well and and who do we build for four generations of mental to left to know what in what less team do we mean for the company but also for the planet but what day do we mean what you enter to make a question and what technically makes a life good in a conversation and be net internet reality tool enjoy this conversation you can think of them if you enjoy ETP and make photos creative and we continue meeting the leaders and builders shaping the future of healthcare technology in AI and you recommend thank you for listening and let's keep moving forward
