A year after Japan’s third largest drug maker bought Ranbaxy, skeletons continue to pop out of the closet
A little more than a week before Malvinder Singh finally hung up his boots at Ranbaxy, India’s largest drug maker, most employees were simply too busy battling the crisis to notice the activity inside the headquarters in Gurgaon. A few employees did, however, notice that several valuable paintings that adorned the walls of the headquarters had been removed and taken away.
The first stirrings of trouble had just begun to hit Ranbaxy. Managing operations spread across 50-plus countries was becoming too complex. Sales growth had begun to peter out in the global as well as local markets. A coterie had begun to form around the Singh family. Poor human resource practices led to high employee turnover. In research and development alone, four departmental heads resigned in quick succession. After remaining debt-free in the early part of this decade, Ranbaxy began piling up debt from 2006. The FDA investigation had just started but no one quite knew the extent of damage it would eventually inflict.
(This story appears in the 19 June, 2009 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)