Deals

Indian Tycoons Known for Lucky Timing Find Time In Short Supply

  • Singh brothers face legal woes from 2008 sale of Ranbaxy
  • Could mean delays of asset sales at their RHC Holding
Lock
This article is for subscribers only.

India’s Singh brothers are serial entrepreneurs known for pulling off one of the best-timed exits in the annals of Indian business.

In 2008, they agreed to sell their family firm and India’s largest drugmaker, Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd., to Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo Co. for $4.6 billion -- just months before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned imports at two of its Indian plants. That same year the U.S. Department of Justice launched a probe, eventually resulting in a guilty plea by Ranbaxy and a $500 million fine for selling adulterated drugs. The Singhs were not named in the Ranbaxy probe.