Ranbaxy's Christmas Turkey: FDA Again Warns Disaster-Prone Company
Call it Ranbaxy's Christmas surprise: The Indian generic drug maker announced after trading on Dec. 23 that it had received a warning from the FDA "for violating certain manufacturing practices" at its Ohm Laboratories site in Gloversville, N.Y., according to the WSJ.
This seems to be Ranbaxy's bid to turn a chaotic year into a full-fledged disaster. Here's a timeline of the misfortunes that have befallen this error-prone operation. Bear in mind, this is an incomplete list -- detailing everything that went wrong at Ranbaxy this year would take too long.
February: The FDA found Ranbaxy was submitting fake data for some of its drugs.
May: Ranbaxy was forced to submit a corrective action plan to FDA to fix its problems.
Also in May: Ranbaxy failed to deliver a batch of Nexium ingredients to AstraZeneca (AZN).
Also in May: CEO Malvinder Singh was axed in favor of COO Atul Sobti.
July: Ranbaxy's Dewas, India, plant was inspected by the FDA.
Also in July: A batch of Sotret, a skin drug, was recalled.
November: Ranbaxy again issued a recall notice for certain batches of Sotret.
Also in November: the company indicated it would take "a long time" to resolve all its problems with the FDA.