Pfizer buys into Brazilian drug maker Teuto

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer said Wednesday it has bought 40% of Brazilian drug company Teuto for 238 million dollars as part of its strategy to boost its presence in emerging markets.

The purchase could lead to the 100-percent acquisition of Teuto in 2014, it said in a statement.

The 40-percent stake "allows Pfizer to increase its participation in Brazil's pharmaceutical market," the head of Pfizer Brazil, Victor Mezei, said in the statement.

He explained that the deal could result in Teuto producing generic versions of Pfizer medicines, and Pfizer using Teuto products in its output.

Pfizer is the world's second-biggest pharmaceutical company in the world after US rival Johnson & Johnson, according to Fortune magazine.

The maker of Viagra to treat erectile dysfunction and Lipitor to lower cholesterol, it had 2009 revenues of 50 billion dollars and profits of 8.6 billion dollars.

Pfizer Brazil generated 703 million dollars in revenues last year.

I can only speculate on the reason why Pfizer has ploughed 238 million dollars into a Brazilian pharmaceutical company is because Pfizer still don't have the trade mark on Viagra in Brazil and this move could be a step in the right direction in getting that.

Spain police catch trafficking gang

Spanish police say that for the first time they have broken up a human-trafficking gang that brought men to the country to work as prostitutes, providing them with Viagra, cocaine and other stimulant drugs to be available for sex with other men 24 hours a day.

Authorities arrested 14 people, mainly Brazilians, on suspicion of running the organization and another 17 alleged prostitutes for being in Spain illegally, the National Police said in a statement Tuesday.

Police inspector Jose Nieto said the case involving the Brazilians was the first in which Spanish authorities dismantled a ring in which traffickers brought in men, rather than women, to toil as sex workers.

The victims, men in their 20s and estimated to number between 60 and 80, were mainly recruited in northern Brazil and saddled with debts of up to euro4,000 ($5,000) as the cost of bringing them to Spain.

Some were duped into thinking legitimate jobs awaited them as go-go dancers or models; others knew they would be working in the sex industry, but not that they had to be prepared for sex around the clock and would be moved from one province to another depending on demand for their services, Nieto told a news conference.

The men had to give half their earnings to the gang, and pay for rent and food in the apartments where they worked.

"If the men complained or caused any kind of problem, the gang leaders would threaten them, even with death," the police statement said.

The arrests were made in recent weeks and the alleged ringleader is a Brazilian based in Palma on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca.

Besides Viagra and cocaine, the men were given marijuana and the club scene drug known as 'poppers', the police statement said.

Sex is a multibillion-dollar industry in Spain, with brothels staffed mainly by poor immigrant women from Latin America, Africa and eastern Europe lining highways just about everywhere and respectable daily newspapers brimming with ads from people selling their bodies. Prostitution falls in legal limbo: it is not regulated, although pimping is a crime.