Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly shopping around for new acquisitions that will broaden their generics portfolios and help offset declining revenues owing to the imminent expiration of many patents. Agila has seven facilities with FDA approval to make injectable drugs for the US market, including both Brazil and India. In its favour, a recent crack down has taken place in the US on poor quality manufacturing of injectables. As a result, there is now a shortage of manufacturing capacity for these medicines, which are mainly used in hospitals.

Agila is now the only manufacturer of high quality sterile injectables from India and is set to earn 13.3 billion rupees in 2012.

The news is speculative, however, in that Strides has so far denied that it is considering selling Agila, and Pfizer has refused to comment.

Agila is certainly a rational target for acquisition, according to several commentators. A report quotes Mr Ajit Kumar Jain, Joint Managing Director of Ipca Laboratories, which produces anti-malarials, as saying, ‘this business is doing well, because manufacturing capacity is in short supply.’ He adds, ‘Strides has good capacity and new facilities.’

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