Wyeth Firms To Be Merged With Cyanamid India
In a move to bring American Home Product Corporation's holdings in the pharma and animal health business under the same umbrella, three Wyeth companies - Wyeth Labs, John Wyeth and Wyeth India are being merged with Cyanamid India Ltd to form Wyeth Lederle Ltd, which will be the tenth largest pharmaceutical company in India.
Wyeth shareholders will get three equity shares in Cyanamid India Ltd for every two held by them in Wyeth Laboratories Ltd while Cyanamid India shareholders will get one share of Cyanamid Agro Ltd for each share held by them in the former.
Cyanamid India Ltd, a Rs 150 crore company, is hiving off its agro business into a separate company, to be called Cyanamid Agro Ltd as a prelude to the merger of the Wyeth companies with it.
The Rs 50 crore Wyeth Labs, is the only listed company being merged with Cyanamid.
At yesterday's meeting, the boards of the concerned companies passed resolutions for the merger and the de-merger. The valuation for the merger was carried out by Dalal & Shah, an independant valuer and A F Ferguson, the common chartered accountants of both companies.
Baldev Arora, chairman of Wyeth Labs and managing director of Cyanamid India, said the High Court would be moved within two weeks to fix the dates of the EGMs for obtaining shareholders' approval.
He also said there will be no changes in the management structure of Cyanamid India Ltd. The combined field strength of the two companies will be 600 with 250 marketing personnel from Wyeth labs and 350 from Lederle, the pharma arm of Cyanamid. Similarly, the combined work force will go up to 2,500.
When asked if there would be a reduction in the work force, Arora said there were no immediate plans but over a period of time, it could be considered. Cyanamid India Ltd had offered a VRS to its employees last year and 87 employees had accepted it.
Arora admitted to wage disparities between Cyanamid and Wyeth, and said the issue would be duly considered.
" We will benefit from a wider product portfolio and the large field force," said Arora. He added that the two companies would be introducing at least two new products during the year. Lederle, the pharma arm of Cyanamid India introduced a meningitis vaccine recently.
American Home Products Corporation, the pharmaceutical and healthcare company had acquired Royal Dutch Shell's pesticides business worldwide and this gives Cyanamid Agro access to Shell's products in India. Cyanamid Agro Ltd will be the eleventh largest agricultural products company in India.