The Year of India in Russia - as 2009 is officially known - has helped India Inc get into a long bear hug with the Russian consumer. They are lapping up everything - from Ratan Tata's marquee cars to Vijay Mallya's whisky.
Ranbaxy, originally promoted by the Singh family, was acquired by Japan's Daiichi Sankyo late last year.
Baba Ramdev and the Tata Group are poles apart in their area of operations, but they have one thing in common: both have been quick to spot the money-spinning potential of Ayurveda's healing touch.
Biocon was scouting for more strategic alliances and exploring opportunities for outlicensing its biotech drugs under development, as it pitches for a slot among the top three bio-pharmaceutical players across the globe, said Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairman and managing director.
If the spiritual guru's Patantjali Yog Peeth Trust has set up one of the world's largest centres for Ayurveda in Hardwar with facilities for treatment, research and a university, the Tatas aren't far behind. India's largest conglomerate has tied up with an NGO, the Foundation for Revitalization of Local Health Traditions, to set up the Indian Institute of Ayurveda Integrated Medicine at Yelahanka near Bengaluru.
Dr Reddy's Laboratories has succeeded in developing a copycat or generic version of Pfizer's Lipitor, the world's largest selling drug which has sales of over $10 billion.
The IPA complaint turns significant in the backdrop of increasing talk about foreign companies buying into Dr Reddy's, Piramal Healthcare and Aurobindo.
The OTC major plans to pump in millions of dollars into Vedants' manufacturing facility coming up by 2011 at Ambernath near Mumbai. Perrigo will then move production of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs or the key therapeutic substance in a drug) from its sites in Germany and Israel to India.
Nandini Piramal, heir apparent to the Piramal business empire as the elder child of Ajay Piramal and Swati Piramal, became the executive director of Piramal Healthcare in April this year. A 29-year-old graduate from Hertford College of Oxford University, with an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, she joined the firm in 2006 as a General Manager and has been closely associated with the company's overseas subsidiaries in the US and Canada.
India's ambitious plans to generate an additional 180,000 Mw of power in the next seven years will face hurdles if Indonesia, the second largest supplier of thermal coal, goes ahead with plans to cap coal exports to serve domestic demand.
Indian drug companies have cornered an overwhelming majority of drug approvals under the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
Teva Women's Health filed a suit this week in the US District Court for New Jersey, claiming that Lupin had filed an abbreviated new drug application with the US Food and Drug Administration, which infringes the patents of Seasonale, its oral contraceptive that limits the number of menstrual periods women have in a year.
Institute of Chartered Accountants of India has sought broad-ranging information about the association of its member institutions with foreign auditing firms.The move assumes significance following the accountancy fraud by the promoters of Satyam Computers that brought the role of auditors under scrutiny. The auditors concerned were associate firms of international auditing entity PricewaterHouseCoopers.
Nova's new owner has decided not to pursue this project.
There are three Price Waterhouse firms and four Price Waterhouse & Co firms in PriceWaterhousCoopers' network of firms in India. Each firm is a separate partnership firm, with a maximum of 20 partners each, with head offices in the cities in which they are registered. Each of these is registered with ICAI. The Pricewater House registered in Bangalore had audited Satyam.
A German bankruptcy court has sold off Reliance Industries' polyester making subsidiary Trevira GmbH to two local entrepreneurs for an undisclosed amount.
Pricing worries remain, but bankers expect IPOs to raise over Rs 40,000 crore (Rs 400 billion) in the next few months.
Domestic drug major Cipla Ltd has signed a long-term collaboration agreement with Swiss specialty pharmaceutical major Meda, to develop and market an anti-allergic rhinitis drug for various global markets. Cipla will manufacture the drug, which will treat an ailment that causes a runny nose, and the Swiss company will market the product in Europe, Japan, Brazil, South Korea and Australia. The partners are developing the product as a nasal spray to treat allergic rhinitis.
Although India is the second largest generator of environment-friendly projects, domestic firms, public and private, are shying away from maximising the monetary benefits derived from such carbon emission reductions. The country, which is second only to China in terms of generating of carbon credits through the introduction of low polluting technologies, ranks very low when it comes to encashing of these credits through carbon trading.
The government had removed all directors related to the Raju family from the board of Satyam before it was handed to the Mahindra group.