The way things are going in Europe these days, drugmakers are well advised to look elsewhere, and most of them are. As Novo Nordisk plays out scenarios for the eurozone--if the currency collapses, what happens to its new diabetes drugs?--it's looking harder at growth in Latin America, Dow Jones reports.
The Danish company plans to hire up in Latin America over the next two to three years, international operations chief Jesper Hoeiland told the newspaper Borsen. Headcount in the region will increase by as much as 800 during that time frame as Novo aims to win market share from rivals such as Sanofi ($SNY) and Eli Lilly ($LLY), Hoeiland said.
As Dow Jones notes, Novo already has a 50% share of the insulin market in Latin America. But that share is based on older-generation drugs that don't have big profit margins. Among the more profitable modern insulins, Sanofi and Lilly dominate. Novo has the chance to change this with the ongoing rollout of its Victoza drug, augmented by the in-development product Degludec, the news service reports.
- read the story from Dow Jones