Indian share markets continued to fall in the post-noon trading session. Barring power, pharma and capital goods all the sectoral indices are trading in the red. Banking, oil & gas and FMCG stocks are the biggest losers.
BSE-Sensex is down by 211 points and NSE-Nifty is trading down by 67 points. BSE Mid Cap is trading down by 0.7% and BSE Small Cap index is trading down by 0.4%. The rupee is trading at 62.6 to the US dollar.
Majority of the Energy stocks are trading in the red, with Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) being the major losers and Oil India and Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) among the few stocks trading in the green. As per a leading financial daily, the shale gas and oil exploration policy has received approval from the cabinet. Resultantly, companies such as ONGC and Oil India will be able to explore shale gas in blocks awarded to them. However, the policy does not allow participation of private companies such as Reliance Industries and Cairn India in shale gas exploration. Moreover, the exploration of shale resources has been restricted to only five on-land basins.
Most of the Indian pharma stocks are trading in red with Panacea biotech and Dishman pharma being the leading underperformers. Forest Laboratories, a US based company has filed litigation against some generic companies including Lupin Ltd and Ranbaxy laboratories. The lawsuits are filed in the US district court of Delware, for infringing the patents which relates to its drug Savella tablets (Milnacipran hydrochloride). The patents in issue are patent number'342 and '220, set to expire in Nov 2021 and Sept 2029 respectively. The innovator of the drug, Forest laboratories has sued the generic companies within 45 days of stipulated time frame. This means the generic company's approval is stayed at least for 30 months beginning from the date of litigation filed. The other companies involved in this patent infringement case include US generic companies viz Par pharma, Mylan, Apotex and Hetero, USA. Which of these companies are among the first to file is still not known. The annual sales of Savella are $ 103 m. Lupin and Ranbaxy are trading down by 0.77% and 0.9% respectively.
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