No hostile takeovers: Ranbaxy

In an interesting twist to the Solrex-Orchid saga, Ranbaxy Laboratories today said it is against hostile takeover of any Indian pharmaceutical company.

Solrex Pharmaceuticals, which is believed to be an investment firm of the Ranbaxy promoters, has picked up a 12 per cent stake in Orchid Chemicals.

A top Ranbaxy executive told Business Standard today that the company is against any hostile takeovers and refused to either confirm or deny whether Solrex is indeed owned by promoters, Malvinder and Shivinder Singh.

He, however, said, Ranbaxy has not gone in for any hostile takeovers so far and its investments in domestic pharmaceutical companies such as Krebs Biochemicals and Industries, Jupiter Biosciences and Zenotech Laboratories were only strategic investments.

Industry analysts said the Singh brothers will adopt the same model for Orchid.

Orchid's share prices, which went up 34 per cent in the last two trading days following reports of a possible creeping acquisition by Solrex, today fell 3.06 per cent on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) to Rs 232.60 at close of trading.

Ranbaxy holds 14.9 per cent each in Jupiter Biosciences, a leading peptide manufacturer, and active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) maker Krebs Biochemicals, besides a 48 per cent stake in Zenotech Laboratories, a Hyderabad-based manufacturer with a good pipeline of cancer drugs and biopharmaceuticals.  It has strategic product supply and research and development alliances with all three companies.  Over the past two to three years, Orchid's name had figured in most of the reported takeover attempts by overseas pharmaceutical companies like Teva of Israel, Novartis's generic arm Sandoz and Pfizer.