Drugmaker Sun Pharmaceutical Industries has clarified that its subsidiary Silver Street Developers LLP had “no access to non-public information of Ranbaxy” at the time it had bought its shares.

Sun Pharma was responding to queries from the bourses on its $4-billion proposal to merge Ranbaxy with itself. The deal has already run into a legal hurdle, with the Andhra Pradesh High Court seeking an investigation into the transaction and allegations of insider-trading.

Ranbaxy’s stock had seen a spike in its price in the run-up to the deal being announced.

“We were not served the notice of the hearing for the AP High Court case referred to and the matter was decided ex parte ,” Sun Pharma told the NSE.

Pointing out that its subsidiary did not have access to non-public information when it had bought Ranbaxy’s shares, Sun Pharma said, “We hereby confirm that we had not bought any shares in the period from April 1 to April 7. Specifically, we had no role to play in the trading that happened in the week prior to the announcement wherein the share price of Ranbaxy went up.”

Sun Pharma further clarified that Silver Street had previously bought these shares as a matter of investment. “Please note at Sun Pharma, we always hold ourselves to the highest standards of corporate governance and business ethics. We believe that, as advised by our advisers, the article/ judgement would not have material impact on the merger process of Ranbaxy with our company,” it said.

Not aware In a separate clarification to the BSE, responding to queries on the Sun-Ranbaxy merger facing a legal hurdle, the company said, “Neither our company was served the notice of the hearing, nor our company was aware of such hearing being held, nor our company is served with the copy of the court order, so the question of submission of court order to the exchanges does not arise.”

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