The wild chase to speculate on the penalty that Ranbaxy Labs would have to shell out to resolve its ongoing problems with the US Food and Drug Administration and Department of Justice may lose steam as the company may not pursue the matter as aggressively any more.

The issue may fall off the priority list of the company, analysts told FE, as most of the drugs in the pipeline may now come from its new plant at Mohali, which recently got inspected by the FDA. This facility according to few sources has managed to get approval of the US drug regulator and is slated to become the next major manufacturing hub for Ranbaxy in India.

Also, once the launch of generic Lipitor has been disengaged from the FDA resolution, it doesn?t make much business sense for Ranbaxy to agree on a penalty amount that hurts its interests, analysts said. Nonetheless, given the way the FDA approval for generic version of Lipitor has come, analysts do not completely rule out an amicable resolution between Ranbaxy and FDA on the matter in the near future.

?As far as the Indian manufacturing base for Ranbaxy is concerned, the Mohali plant appears to take on a more important role in Ranbaxy?s scheme of things than the two disputed facilities at Paonta Sahib and Dewas,? said Ranjit Kapadia, SVP, Centrum Broking.

Another analyst told FE, ?It was the high stakes in timely Lipitor launch in the US market that prompted Ranbaxy to seek a speedier resolution with FDA on clearing the Paonta Sahib facility because the company planned to roll out the generic cholesterol drug from its Indian facility. After Lipitor launch on Thursday, we think the issue largely loses relevance for Ranbaxy, at least from a business perspective even though it may want to solve the associated problems to clear its name and reach a closure with the US drug regulator.?

Speculations on the amount of penalty have ranged from $200 million to $1 billion. Most analysts factored in a penalty of around $250-300 million.

The US enforcement actions against Ranbaxy began in 2008 when the FDA cited manufacturing defects at two of the company?s plants in India and subsequently barred the company from importing about 30 different drugs from the disputed plants. The following year, the agency said one of those plants, in Paonta Sahib, India, falsified data used in drug applications.