India’s Piramal at centre of buy-out speculation
pharmafile | February 9, 2009 | News story | Sales and Marketing | MA, Piramal
Indian pharmaceutical company Piramal has denied that it ready to sell up to one of the global giants of the sector.
The Mumbai-based company is one of India's largest pharmaceutical companies. It conducts its own in-house research, and had revenues of $602 million in 2006-07.
The company also has capacity for custom manufacturing, with operations in North America, Europe and Asia.
Despite protestations from the company that it is not planning to sell, big names in pharma such as GSK and Sanofi-Aventis have been mooted as potential buyers, with the price estimated at around $1.5 billion.
The acquisition of the company would give any European or US pharma company a much enhanced presence in India, which is set to become one of the world's biggest markets for pharmaceuticals in the coming decades. It is already a key location for manufacturing, and the availability of trial participants and research scientists is increasingly attracting R&D investment.
Piramal has said talk of its acquisition is "totally unfounded" and that it is investing in its own business, and has itself acquired several specialist companies to expand its portfolio.
The company's research is focused on four therapeutic areas – cancer, diabetes, inflammation and infectious diseases, with a total of 14 compounds in its pipeline.
Five of these are in clinical trials, and its lead compound is a Cdk-4 inhibitor for Mantle cell Lymphoma (MCL) a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
The company has drug discovery and developments agreements with Lilly and Merck, while GSK is one of its biggest customers for contract manufacturing.
It is this connection, along with GSK chief executive Andrew Witty's focus on emerging markets, which has fuelled rumours of a move by the British pharma company.
The sale of Piramal might be frowned upon by Indians, however. Many were said to be dismayed last year when pharma generics company Ranbaxy sold up to Japanese pharma company Daiichi Sankyo. Ranbaxy was one of India's most high profile successes, and a symbol of the country as an emerging power in global business.
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