When Girls Take the Lead - Pharmaceutical Executive

www.focusreports.net
Brazil Report
Boehringer Ingelheim’s plant
elderly if we take into consideration that
more than 50% of the population is below
30,” observes Boehringer's general director,
Volker Bargon.
S25 FOCUS REPORTS OCTOBER 2007
As one of the few
n o n - B r a z i l i a n
CEOs based in
Brazil (most multinational
drug companies
appoint
Brazilians to the top
spot at their
Brazilian operations),
Bargon had a
bit of a learning
curve. “First of all, I
would say the language
barrier
because speaking
just English is not
enough to successfully
manage and
run a business in this country. Brazil is less
international than I anticipated it would
be. Another factor would be that the
Brazilian market lacks of consolidation. In
a scattered picture, if you look into the
SPONSORED SUPPLEMENT
area of doctors, retail and wholesalers, you
can see numbers which we do not experience
in any other markets, and this makes
things more challenging. The last point
would be from the perspective of managing
a business. Business in Brazil is very
much based on personal contacts, it is very
much driven by 'who knows who' and
'what is your level of hierarchy'. You have
to deal very personally with people and
business, which for me can be translated
and viewed as a still very informal and
unstructured environment,” he explains.
“It took me almost one year to understand
the rules, to understand how the people
think. They appear in some respects to be
very American due to their education and
they also appear in some other respects, to
be very European, but if you listen very
carefully and if you go a little bit behind
the scenes, you find a very South
American nature.”