SK Capital buys generics producer Apotex, troubled since the murder of founder Barry Sherman

Unsettled since its founder Barry Sherman was discovered murdered along with his wife in 2017, Apotex has finally been sold.

Private investment firm SK Capital has bought the Toronto-based, family-owned company. Terms of the sale for Canada’s largest producer of generic drugs were not disclosed. In 2019, when the company hired a financial advisor to review its options, Apotex was said to be worth up to $3 billion.

Rumors of a potential sale heated up last November, shortly after the company was ordered to pay $49 million to resolve price-fixing allegations of cholesterol drug pravastin.

Apotex employs approximately 8,000 people, operates in more than 45 countries and exports a variety of products to more than 100 nations. In addition to Canada and the U.S., Apotex has a major presence in India and Mexico.

The “industry expertise and resources” of SK Capital will “grow our leadership in the market and maintain our focus on improving access to high-quality affordable medicines,” Apotex CEO Jeff Watson said in a release.

New York City-based SK Capital specializes in boosting underperforming companies with “strategic positioning” and by minimizing their risk, the investment firm said.

Apotex has been in tumult since the death of Sherman, who founded the company in 1974. After Sherman and his wife, Honey, were found dead at their Toronto mansion in December 2017, the family took control of the company. The case remains unsolved.

A few months after the family took over, then-CEO Jeremy Desai stepped down amid allegations that he stole trade secrets from a girlfriend who previously served as an executive at Teva Pharmaceutical. Desai denied the allegations and sued back.

Then in 2019, Apotex withdrew 31 of its generic drug approvals from the FDA after the agency identified manufacturing deficiencies at two plants in India. Among the products that lost their FDA nods were blood pressure drugs valsartan and losartan, the antibiotic azithromycin and a copycat of Viagra.