PFIZER MAY make a bid for Ranbaxy Laboratories to counter a $4.6 billion (€2.99 billion) package from Japan's Daiichi Sankyo Co Ltd for the Indian generic drug maker, India's Business Standardnewspaper reported yesterday.

Pfizer, the world's largest drug maker, may bid for the approximately 65 per cent of Ranbaxy held by institutions and public shareholders, the newspaper said.

Ranbaxy has an generic drug manufacturing facility in Cashel, Co Tipperary, which employs about 80 people. The company set up in the Republic in 1996 with the acquisition of another pharmaceutical group, Rema, but had announced plans to sell its Irish facility in 2006.

Ranbaxy had decided to consolidate its European drug production at a site in Romania, but later took the Cashel facility off the market and it is still operational.

Daiichi Sankyo's deal to take control of India-based Ranbaxy will mean the two firms seeking to become a pharmaceuticals powerhouse, selling brands and gen-erics. Japan's third-biggest drugmaker agreed to acquire 34.8 per cent of the firm from Ranbaxy's founding Singh family, and make an open offer for up to 20 per cent, in line with Indian regulations.

The newspaper said Pfizer had held talks with the Ranbaxy founders for a possible acquisition a year earlier, and may now offer to buy out the stake held by lenders and other investors.

"That is speculation," a Ranbaxy spokesman said. "We have a binding contract with Daiichi. It is a final contract."

On Thursday, when asked in Tokyo what he would do if another bidder appeared at a higher price, Ranbaxy chief executive Malvinder Singh said: "This is a firm and binding agreement between the two sides."

Daiichi Sankyo declined to comment on the report and Pfizer could not be immediately reached for comment.

Ranbaxy has been battling Pfizer over patent rights for the US firm's blockbuster cholesterol lowering drug, Lipitor, in several countries, and has been successful in certain cases. It failed in the Republic. -