India regulators have cleared Glenmark Pharmaceuticals to sell as much as 49% of its shares to foreign institutional investors, up from its former 40% limit. The move paves the way for major investors such as Singapore's Temasek Holdings.
Apparently simultaneously, the company sold more than 10 million shares to an investing unit of the Singapore government.
The Reserve Bank of India, the country's central bank, monitors the daily trading in domestic companies and sets a maximum according to a range of cutoff points.
Given a 49% maximum, Glenmark joins fellow India pharma biggies such as Auribindo, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories ($RDY), Sun Pharmaceutical and Wockhardt.
It was not immediately clear whether the FII action was related, but Glenmark's board on the same day voted to sell 10.8 million shares to Aranda Investments, a Mauritius-based unit of Temasek Holdings, Singapore's investment company.
Aranda's investment amounted to about $137.4 million, driving back up Glenmark's closing share price at the end of the previous week.
That week ended before the India Supreme Court announced it was reimposing a stay on Glenmark marketing two generic versions of Merck ($MRK) diabetes drugs involved in a patent dispute.
- here's the story from NDTV
- and the notice from the Reserve Bank of India