Daiichi open offer for Ranbaxy shares to start Aug 16

By IANS,

New Delhi : Japanese drug maker Daiichi Sankyo’s open offer for shares of Indian pharmaceutical major Ranbaxy Laboratories will begin Aug 16 and close Sep 4, the manager to the public offer said Tuesday.


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Indian investment bank ICICI Securities, the public offer’s manager, said in a regulatory statement that the letter of offer will be despatched to Ranbaxy shareholders Aug 11 instead of July 31, as announced earlier.

Similarly, the opening of the open offer has been rescheduled to Aug 16 from Aug 8.

The last date of revising the open offer price or the number of shares to be acquired has now been rescheduled to Aug 28 from Aug 21.

The open offer will close Sep 4 instead of Aug 27, the statement said.

The date of communicating rejection or acceptance and payment for the accepted shares has now been rescheduled to Sep 19 from Sep 10 as announced earlier.

The statement scotches speculation that Daichii Sankyo may not go ahead with plans to acquire the 34.8 percent promoters’ stake in India’s biggest pharmaceutical company following allegations that Ranbaxy was selling “spurious” drugs in the US.

The Japanese drug maker had agreed to the acquisition deal in June.

Investors immediately welcomed the news by picking up Ranbaxy shares on the Bombay Stock Exchange and Daichii shares on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

In early morning trade, Ranbaxy’s shares rose 3.8 percent while Daichii, Japan’s third largest drug manufacturer, climbed 4.1 percent.

Following allegations that the Indian company was selling “spurious” or “illegal” drugs in the US market, the US Justice Department had filed a motion calling for an investigation into Ranbaxy’s operations by the Federal Drug Authority (FDA).

Ranbaxy has denied the charges.

Recently, Ranbaxy said the motion would most likely be withdrawn once the company filed the information sought from it by US authorities.

The company had furthered announced that the deadline for filing the information had been extended by 60 days to Oct 3.

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