By Nishant Kumar MUMBAI (Reuters) - Morgan Stanley believes Indian generic drug makers are good bets for investment because of the world's drive towards bringing down healthcare costs and making medicines affordable, a fund manager said on Friday.
"My sense is that it is similar to the opportunity that we had in IT way back in 1999," said Jayesh Gandhi, referring to India's information technology sector, which became the hub for outsourcing to companies and governments across the world. Gandhi, who manages about $100 million in India for the U.S. money manager, said Indian drug firms were available cheap at 6-7 times their price to earnings multiple and could show an earnings growth of 30-40 percent. He was also overweight on utilities and consumer goods, but saw bad loans posing a risk to banks' profitability in 2009/10. The fund manager slashed bank bets to 10.11 percent of Morgan Stanley ACE Fund's assets at the end of July from nearly 25 percent in December and has more than tripled holding in drug firms to 7.14 percent, data from fund tracker ICRA showed. "One thing which is changing very, very significantly is the importance of Indian generics in the supply of global pharmaceuticals industry," said Gandhi, who holds Aurobindo Pharma, Cadila Healthcare, Dr Reddy's Laboratories and Jubilant Organosys. He said the U.S. generics market, the world's biggest, will double in size to about $100 billion in five to seven years, creating at least a $10 billion to $15 billion opportunity for Indian drug makers. U.S. President Barack Obama's drive for healthcare reforms and lower cost can only be done by using the cheaper Indian generics, he said. *Continued... <javascript:goToPage(2);>* *http://in.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idINIndia-41609720090807* -- *Power and Repose: Swami Vivekananda. * http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcG-jDGG4UY --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""GLOBAL SPECULATORS"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalspeculators?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
