Cade, the Brazilian antitrust and competition authority, recently fined 20 big pharmaceutical companies for boycotting the entry of generic drugs into the Brazilian market. Janssen-Cilag was ordered to pay a fine of 2 per cent of its 1998 turnover for its part in organising a meeting on 27 June 1999 to design the strategy against generic drugs in Brazil. The other 19 companies were fined 1 per cent of their 1998 turnover.
Portugal’s regulator fines drug firms for price fixing
Five major US and European drug companies were fined a total of 16 million euros (19.2 million dollars), the biggest fine ever issued by the authority, for working together to artificially fix prices for diabetes tests.
The companies were Abbott Laboratories and Johnson and Johnson of the United States, Germany's Bayer AG, Italy's Menarini Diagnosticos and Switzerland's Roche.
The antitrust regulator opened its investigation after a public hospital in Coimbra, Portugal's third-largest city, complained that the five firms had all proposed the same price for the same test between 2001 and 2003.
OFT calls for CTSA to be placed within OFT
Following consultation on the Hampton Review, the UK Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has asked for the new Consumer and Trading Standards Agency (CTSA) to be placed within the OFT.
In a letter to the Department of Trade and Industry, the OFT stated that the placement of the CTSA within a restructured OFT would complement the role and functions of the OFT, effectively strengthening competition and consumer protection policy in the UK.
The OFT’s response to the Hampton Review (which proposed the formation of the new consumer agency) outlines the changes already made within the OFT following the implementation of the Enterprise Act 2002 which have made it more suitable to handling competition and consumer protection work.
The OFT have also warned that competition and consumer policy in the UK could be weakened if they are separated.
