In 2010, worldwide pharmaceutical sales force and marketing spending rose 1.5% from a year earlier to just over $91 billion, but only thanks to the contributions of companies in China, Japan and Latin America, as major Western companies made steep cuts.

This is the conclusion of a Cegedim Strategic Data survey, which analyzed spending in the sector in over 30 countries around the world. Spending reserved for congresses and other events saw an average increase of 5% to 13 billion dollars, again thanks to the activities of Japan (+14%), China (+19%) and Latin America (+18%).

Indeed, a drop in 17% was observed in the United States and 7% in Europe. Also in 2010, global sales force and promotion spending grew by 2.2% to $56 billion, but the cuts in the United States were large: several large companies cut their headcount by more than 10%, as well as in Europe.

The reverse is the case in China, Latin America and Japan, which have also increased the number of informants and other promotion workers by a double-digit percentage.

Barbara Di Chiara – 11 July 2011 – Pharmakronos 

Farmindustria: Italian pharmaceutical companies believe in R&D

Contrary to the global trend reported in the 2011 Pharmaceutical R&D factbook (see Farmacista33 of 29 June 2011), Italian pharmaceutical companies focus and invest more and more on the research and development (R&D) of new drugs. This is demonstrated by the sector figures provided by Farmindustria: 2.4 billion in investments, of which 1.2 billion in Research and 1.2 billion in high-tech plants. An opportunity to discuss them was the presentation of the new president, Massimo Scaccabarozzi, and the new vice presidents of the association Lucia Aleotti, Maurizio De Cicco, Francesco De Santis, Daniel Lapeyre and Emilio Stefanelli, which was held last Thursday. According to estimates, research is supported for 90% by companies, and 6,050 are employed in R&D, 9.1% of the total (against