
Pharmaceutical major Ranbaxy Labs today said its board has approved the hiving off of its R038;D unit into Ranbaxy Life Science Research and is also open to equity stake partnerships with pharma or bio-pharma firms. The board has also approved offering one share in the new entity to its existing shareholders having four shares.
The board of directors of the company has approved the scheme of demerger of the company8217;s New Drug Discovery Research NDDR unit into a subsidiary, following which the shareholders of Ranbaxy would receive one equity share in the newly-formed entity for every four shares held in Ranbaxy.
Ranbaxy has a strong new chemical entity pipeline of around 15 molecules with the anti-malaria drug in phase II and two molecules in phase I of clinical trials and the remaining in pre-clinical stages. All assets, liabilities, research personnel and pipeline related to the NDDR unit would be transferred to Ranbaxy Life Science Research RLSRL. The new entity would be listed at the Indian stock exchanges and the Global Depository Receipt8217;s at the Luxembourg Stock Exchange, the company said.
8220;The demerger of our NDDR unit into a separate entity establishes a robust structure to carry out path-breaking research at the cutting edge of modern medicine,8221; Ranbaxy Lab CEO and MD Malvinder Mohan Singh said.
Ranbaxy has subscribed to preference shares worth Rs 200 crore of RLSRL.