Sony Group Corp. dodged a bullet when its attorneys nixed a $10 billion Indian merger that executives had spent two years attempting to carry to fruition. The spurned goal hasn’t been as fortunate. Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. has no different suitors on the horizon, and its founders’ mounting authorized troubles are threatening to engulf the agency.

To overseas traders, the Sony-Zee saga is a reminder of the necessity to strategy Indian offers with an abundance of warning. In 2008, Daiichi Sankyo Co. shelled out $4.6 billion to purchase Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd., a generic drugmaker, from New Delhi-based brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh. Shortly after, US regulators barred more than 30 drugs made at two of the Indian firm’s crops and halted critiques of latest merchandise at one of many factories as a result of the agency had falsified data. Daiichi received pulled right into a rabbit gap to win an arbitration award in opposition to the brothers for suppressing info, and then to get it enforced.