India’s Sun Pharma to buy struggling Ranbaxy for $3.2 billion as Daiichi Sankyo retreats

By Chang-Ran Kim and Zeba Siddiqui TOKYO/MUMBAI (Reuters) – India's Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd has agreed to buy generic drugmaker Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd for $3.2 billion, betting it can fix factory quality glitches that plagued the current owner, Japan's Daiichi Sankyo Co , and got Ranbaxy India-made drugs barred from the United States. For Daiichi Sankyo, Japan's fourth-biggest drugmaker by revenue, the deal marks a significant retreat and highlights the lingering quality problems facing India's drug industry. The value of the Japanese firm's investments in the country has been halved since it bought control of Ranbaxy in 2008. The deal comes against the backdrop of a slew of sanctions against Ranbaxy by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) due to concerns about manufacturing processes at its India plants.