When Pfizer, the world's largest drug maker, acquired 40 percent of Brazilian generic pharmaceutical firm Laboratorio Teuto Brasileiro in October last year, it wasn't a big surprise for industry watchers. Pfizer isn't the only pharma giant with an eye on Brazil's US$26 billion pharmaceuticals industry and its small but growing niche in generic drugs. A year earlier, French pharma firm Sanofi-Aventis bought Medley, Brazil's leading generics brand with annual sales of around US$286 million, in a US$679 million deal.
Other such deals could be on the way, predict some experts. "The big pharma companies worldwide are struggling with an absence of big blockbuster drug discoveries. They are losing revenue and cutting research," says Odinir Finotti, president of Pró Genericos, a Brazilian trade association representing 95 generic pharmaceutical firms. "So part of their strategy has been to buy generic drug companies, because that is where a lot of the growth is coming from."
Growth, indeed: In Brazil, sales last year of generic drugs -- which are nearly identical reproductions of off-patent medications and are distributed without patent protection -- increased 53 percent from the previous year, to around US$3.5 billion, according to Pró Genericos. Overall, Brazil sold more than 330 million units in 2010, up from roughly 233 million units of generic drugs in 2007.
According to a Bloomberg report, brand-name pharmaceutical companies like Sanofi-Aventis, Novartis and Eli Lilly were unhappy with growing generic drugs exports from both Brazil and India and began alerting EU customs officials about shipments of drugs from those countries that are suspected of intellectual property infringement. But after roughly 17 seizures at EU borders of Indian-made generic drug medications over the course of a year, the two emerging markets cried foul.
For more: Latin Business Chronicle – Latin American Business News and Intelligence
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