Sun Pharmaceutical Industries said on Monday that the Ranbaxy Laboratories? shares bought by its subsidiary, Silver Street Developers LLP, prior to the announcement of its $4-billion acquisition of Ranbaxy, was a ?matter of investment?.
?… further note that SilverStreet had bought the Ranbaxy shares when we had no access to non-public information of Ranbaxy,? Sun Pharma said in a statement to the stock exchanges on Monday.
Ranbaxy shares had jumped as much as 20.09% on the Bombay Stock Exchange in four trading days before the deal was reported. The Gurgaon-based company’s stock plunged about 18.5% in its market value in the one year preceding April 2, 2014, following the US Food and Drug Administration imposing an import ban on products manufactured in four of its plants due to violations of good manufacturing standards. ?We hereby confirm that we had not bought any shares in the period from April 1 to April 7. Specifically, we had no role to play in the trading that happened in the week prior to the announcement wherein the share price of Ranbaxy went up,? Sun Pharma added.
Last week, the Andhra Pradesh High Court issued an order to BSE and NSE to impose a temporary stay on the acquisition after a group of individual investors filed a petition with the court.
