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| Strides CEO Arun Kumar |
With the approval of the Competition Commission of India (CCI), Strides Arcolab will pick up Shasun Pharmaceuticals in a $200 million deal that will expand its manufacturing capabilities and cut its costs and, it hopes, its risks.
The CCI recently ruled that "The proposed combination is not likely to have any appreciable adverse effect on competition in India and therefore, the Commission hereby approves the proposed combination," the Business Standard reports.
In September, the two Indian companies announced their plans to merge, indicating combined they could cut their risks in a regulatory environment that had caught up a number of drugmakers, Strides founder and CEO Arun Kumar explained at the time. The combined company will have a dozen facilities, half of them FDA approved, making ingredients and finished-dose products. The companies indicated that the 6 facilities that are not FDA-approved will serve emerging markets.
The Shasun deal strengthens Strides' place in finished-dose manufacturing after Strides sold its sterile injectables business to Mylan ($MYL) in 2013 in a $1.75 billion deal. But Strides has not given up on that business entirely. In December it announced it would spend about $60 million on a 140,000-square-foot sterile manufacturing facility in Malaysia.
- read the Business Standard story