Why Pfizer planning a $5B USD counter bid for the largest Indian branded generics

While Invitrogen is making news merging into Applied Biosystems, with its $ 6.7 B USD deal creating the first of its kind of company, that can boast to own and invade every sphere of biological research from wet lab to information systems.

Pfizer is planning to counter bid the $4.6 billion offer by Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo Co Ltd  for the Indian generic drug maker Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. Ranbaxy has been a thorn in the big pharma fight against, generics and branded generics. Reason Ranbaxy just got FDA approval–and 180-day exclusivity–to sell a copycat version of Pfizer’s cholesterol lowering drug lipitor beginning in March 2010. Why should  lose all that cholesterol-drug revenue when, with a buyout, it could recapture it?

Raising fears that Indian companies that supply WHO and other World Organizations with cheap medicine will go under the hammer of Big multinationals, prompting hike in prices of drugs for treating  AIDs to cancer, cholestrol , hyper-tension or even antibiotics to fight infections, whose prices are the lowest in the world . Perhaps the era of cheap drugs may be over.

India is the biggest supplier of cheaper versions of essential drugs to the developing world and has a share of nearly 25% in the overall generic space. Domestic generic biggies particularly Ranbaxy and Cipla have been recognized globally, not only for their low-cost medicines, but also of their ability to produce quality medicines.

For instance, Cipla offers a first line AID Medicine which is a combination of three drugs, at a price of $100 per patient per year as against the MNC tag of $10,349, a huge reduction of over 100 times.