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| Executive Travel: São Paulo |
Business Essentials
Daniel DelRe
03/01/2006
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The term “competitive intelligence” seems like a tired bit of business
school jargon, unless you invest in Brazil’s large and rapidly growing economy.
Here, it is applied both literally and aggressively.
Last year, when residents of northern Brazil complained about the taste and
shoddy packaging of branded medications, multinational pharmaceutical companies
turned to private competitive intelligence consultants to investigate. The
consultants traveled throughout the region collecting samples from pharmacies
and analyzing them for authenticity. After establishing that the drugs were
phonies, they secured evidence of fake labs and turned the information over to
authorities.
When regulatory agencies in this country of 186 million fail to
thwart even simple graft like this, the private sector steps into the vacuum to
scrutinize managers and uncover evidence of fraud, trade violations and
anticompetitive behavior.
Competitive intelligence consultants are one
example of the forces adding transparency to business relationships in Brazil.
But enforcement of intellectual property laws remains indifferent, earning
Brazil a spot on the World Trade Organization’s Priority Watch List. Copyright
and trademark infringement, as in the case of the phony pharmaceuticals, is
common, the WTO reports. Brazil also needs to improve the processing of patent
applications. “Foreign investors in Brazil are very focused on the intellectual
property issues,” said Vander Giordano, a director at Kroll, a risk consulting
business whose São Paulo office investigated the pharmacies. “It’s a weakness
that the government is trying to address, but progress has been slow.”
Kroll
recently helped media companies amass evidence of counterfeit compact discs and
DVDs imported from Asia. In São Paulo, Kroll employs a 36-person team comprised
of economists, accountants, lawyers and journalists. And, increasingly,
information technology professionals are helping Kroll identify offenders by
searching through clogged databases to find documents and emails vital in
lawsuits.
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