Jupiter Bio to allot 14.9% stake to Ranbaxy

Ranbaxy Laboratories, the country's top drug maker, plans to acquire 14.9 per cent stake in Jupiter Bioscience Ltd, a manufacturer of specialised organic compounds, through preferential warrants.

Jupiter Bioscience today informed Bombay Stock Exchange it plans to allot preferential equity share warrants to Ranbaxy. The company, however, did not mention the price at which it will allot the warrants.

Jupiter would seek the approval of its board of directors in their April 12 meeting. This equity stake would take shape only after the Qualified Institutional Placement and conversion of promoter warrants into equity shares, it added.

On March 30, when reports first emerged about a possible stake-sale to Ranbaxy, shares of the peptide maker jumped 10 per cent (its maximum permissible limit for one day) on BSE.

The proposed warrant allotment is a part of the term sheet signed between the companies earlier which includes forging a strategic business tie-up on peptide pharmaceuticals for the global market.

Jupiter Bioscience has a wholly owned US subsidiary "" Jupiter Bioscience Inc, to cater to markets of peptides and peptide components in the US, Europe, Canada and Japan.

Its other 100 per cent subsidiary Sven Genetech is engaged in making nutraceuticals, cosmoceuticals and unnatural amino acids for India and unregulated markets.

In the regulatory filing on the BSE, the company said it is going to decide on the date for convening the extraordinary general meeting for considering the terms of strategic business alliance with Ranbaxy.