Big Pharma still big on emerging markets

The emerging-markets gold rush continues. Drugmakers continued their race into those fast-growing, tantalizing new markets. India, China, Brazil, Russia, Mexico.

The emerging-markets gold rush continues. Drugmakers continued their race into those fast-growing, tantalizing new markets. India, China, Brazil, Russia, Mexico--all so alluring in a world in which countries that could once be counted on for steady increases are no longer delivering.

So while drugmakers cut jobs and otherwise retrenched in the U.S. and Europe, they continued to recruit emerging-markets salespeople and draw up plans for R&D and manufacturing facilities there. Novartis and its $500 million plans for Russia, Novo Nordisk's $100 million insulin plant in the same country, Sanofi-Aventis' plans for a plant in Saudi Arabia, Eisai's bid to move Aricept manufacturing to India for export worldwide ... drugmakers are bulking up in these new markets, literally.

Of course, the buyouts and partnerships and licenses haven't stopped. In its first China partnership, Merck teamed up with Sinopharm, aiming to spread its vaccines in that country; the deal could