Mumbai-based Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, India’s largest pharma company by market capitalisation, has struck another large overseas acquisition through its wholly owned arm Caraco Pharmaceutical Laboratories Ltd to buy generics business of URL Pharma Inc from Japanese drugmaker Takeda. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Former privately-held Philadelphia-based pharmaceutical company URL Pharma was acquired by Takeda America Holdings, Inc. (TAH) in June 2012. Takeda had previously announced it will buy URL Pharma for $800 million, in addition to potential further payments based on the company’s performance.
As part of the deal, the non-Colcrys (colchicine, USP) generic assets of URL Pharma will be owned and managed by Caraco.
This is the second deal by Sun Pharma in two months. In November, it snapped NASDAQ-listed dermatology company DUSA Pharmaceuticals, Inc., for $230 million in cash.
The latest deal comes just four months after Sun Pharma reached an agreement to buy out the minority shareholders of New York Stock Exchange-listed Taro Pharmaceutical Industries and thereby take it private in a deal that worth $592 million.
Coupled with Sun Pharma’s earlier investments in Taro, the deal translates into the largest acquisition by an Indian healthcare firm (within India or overseas) till date. This brought to an end a long-pending deal which had got stuck in legal tangles.
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