Pre-market: Ranbaxy, Sun Pharma to be in focus

Markets are likely to open flat on Monday tracking mixed Asian cues. Ranbaxy and Sun Pharma will be in focus.

Markets are likely to open flat on Monday tracking mixed Asian cues. However, Sun Pharma and Ranbaxy Labs will be in focus throughout the trading session following Sun Pharma's plans to acquire Ranbaxy Labs.

At 8:25AM, the SGX Nifty was up 8 points at 6,753.    

Asian stocks were trading mixed on Monday while a stronger yen led to profit taking in Japanese stocks. The Nikkei was down 1.3%, Hang Seng was down 0.5% while Shanghai Composite was up 0.7%.

US stocks ended lower on Friday with biotech stocks witnessing profit taking for the second consecutive day.

According to the US non-farm payroll data, 192,000 jobs were added in March against expectation of 200,000 and addition on 197,000 jobs in February. However, the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 6.7%.

The Dow Jones ended down 1% at 16,413, the S&P 500 lost 1.2% to close at 1,865 and the tech-laden Nasdaq ended 2.6% lower at 4,128.

Stocks in Europe ended nearly 1% higher after encouraging US jobs data during March.The CAC-40 ended up 0.8% at 4,486, DAX gained 0.7% to close at 9,696 and the FTSE-100 ended up 0.7% at 6,695.


Stocks in Focus

Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd said it will buy generic drug maker Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd, which has hit regulatory snags in its key US market over quality issues, in an all-share deal with total equity value of $3.2 billion.

The Philippines has awarded the $320-million deal to renovate, expand and operate the Mactan-Cebu international airport to India's GMR Infrastructure Ltd and local partner Megawide Construction Corp.

Bharat Heavy Electricals will see some selling pressure after it reported 51% drop in provisional net profit to Rs 3,228 crore for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2014. The company had reported a net profit of Rs 6,615 in 2012-13.