China's Fosun Pharma eyes reduced Gland Pharma stake

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China's Fosun Pharmaceutical plans to acquire a 74-percent stake in Indian injectables manufacturer Gland Pharma for nearly 1.1 billion US dollars, in a bid to salvage a stalled deal that would be the biggest takeover by a Chinese firm in India.

Fosun Pharma struck a deal in July last year to buy an 86-percent stake valued at about 1.26 billion US dollars in the Indian generic drugmaker.

But it ran into trouble because foreign investment above 74 percent in India’s pharmaceutical sector requires approval from the government.

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The current offer includes a payment capped at 25 million dollars for Gland's sales of the Enoxaparin blood-thinning drug in the United States, according to a statement from Fosun on Sunday.

Fosun said in a statement on Sunday that the deal no longer required a nod from India’s Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, and that it had already received approval from Chinese regulators and applied for antitrust approval in the United States and India.

Gland's managing director Ravi Penmetsa told Reuters that some approvals the original deal had received were at risk of expiring. "Now with this new agreement, we won’t have to reapply for those," he said, adding that he expects the deal to be completed in two weeks.

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Gland said the deal would allow it to make biosimilars, lucrative copies of biotech drugs, at Fosun’s site and sell them in India.

Fosun Pharma also on Sunday said that it would spend no more than 25 million US dollars to market the Indian company’s Enoxaparin in the United States, when it obtains approval there, cutting the previously proposed marketing spending by half.

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Founded in 1978, Hyderabad-based Gland Pharma is the first company in India to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for injectable liquid medicines. The US and European markets account for the majority of its revenue.

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