Pharma stocks dip owing to US generic drug probe

All the Pharma stocks closed in red, post US Department of Justice holding two former employees accused for colluding with the generic pharma companies to fix prices. This was the first accusation in the long-drawn investigation in the past two years.

U.S. prosecutors have undertaken a criminal investigation into generic pharmaceutical companies regarding a suspected price manipulation by the firms, attributed to spiralling cost of certain medicines in the US markets.

The investigation spans more than a dozen pharma companies and about two dozen drugs. The main case over here has been of price fixation between the drug companies as they are suspected to have met executives of other pharma companies in fixing prices of many drugs related to heart and anti-biotics.

Reacting to these developments pharma firms were under pressure throughout the trading session with the likes of Sun Pharma (down 4 %), Divi’s Lab (down 2 %), Dr Reddy’s Lab (down 1.5 %) and Aurobindo Pharma (down 1.2 %).

CNX Pharma was trading lower on the exchanges as it closed down 1.9 per cent at 10,655.50