India M&A Hourglass: Control Deals, ‘FOMO’, Monetization Calls At Family-Owned Firms

India’s pharma M&A landscape has had its high-points and some seeming lows.

Way back in 2010, Piramal  divested its branded generic-medicines business to Abbott Laboratories at a stunning 30x EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization).(Also see "Piramal Dreams Big, Wants To Be In Top Five India-Listed Pharma" - Scrip, 7 December, 2021.)

Navroz Mahudawala, founder and managing director of investment bank Candle Partners noted that post the Piramal-Abbott transaction there was a very long lull period, when almost no major transactions happened because the expectations got set so high that most of the Indian sellers didn't want to follow suit.

Then there was also the Ranbaxy-Daiichi Sankyo Co., Ltd. deal, which perhaps scarred the Indian pharma M&A landscape for a considerable period.

In 2012 Daiichi Sankyo had, amid a string of allegations and other actions, initiated arbitration proceedings in Singapore against the former shareholders of Ranbaxy, the Singh brothers, over alleged misrepresentation of critical information concerning the US Department of Justice (DoJ) and FDA investigations against Ranbaxy at the time of the 2008 takeover by the Japanese company. (Also see "Ranbaxy Brothers Arrested, Downward Spiral Intensifies" - Scrip, 11 October, 2019.)

The arbitration award had gone Daiichi’s way and in 2016 the Singh brothers were asked to cough up a full award of JPY56.2bn ($525m at the time) including attorneys' fees and arbitration costs.(Also see "