The raging battle that had engulfed the $14 billion Hinduja empire appears to have ended after the warring billionaire brothers decided to call a truce.
A Bloomberg report said the four brothers — Srichand, Gopichand, Prakash and Ashok — have agreed to halt reams of litigation across Europe ending, for now, a feud that was tearing the once tightly-knit British-Indian group apart.
The battle had exploded just over two years ago after the daughters of patriarch Srichand Hinduja (86), who has been suffering from dementia, accused their uncles of sidelining them and demanded a share of the family fortune. Srichand’s eldest daughter Vinoo moved the courts in the UK to press their claim that threatened to split the close-knit group.
At the heart of the battle was a pact signed by the four brothers in 2014 which emphasized that “everything belongs to everyone and nothing belongs to anyone.” This was based on a belief inherited from their father, Parmanand Deepchand Hinduja, who was born in Shikarpur in Sind (now in Pakistan) on November 25, 1901, and founded the family business when he moved to Bombay in 1914.
Srichand and his wife Madhu have two daughters, Shanu and Vinoo, who are involved in the health and philanthropic sectors. Gopi and his wife Sunita have two sons, Sanjay and Dheeraj, and a daughter, Rita.
Prakash and his wife Kamal have two sons, Ajay and Ramkrishan, and a daughter, Renuka. Ashok and his wife Harsha have two daughters, Ambika and Satya, and a son, Shom.
As in many traditional Indian families, only the boys were groomed for the family business and have been allocated a “vertical” each.
The Bloomberg report claimed the battle ended after lawyers for Gopichand Hinduja said in June that the family had agreed to effectively tear up the arrangement reached in 2014.
But this could set the stage for the break-up of one of the largest industrial conglomerates that straddles 11 sectors from automotives, oil and speciality chemicals to banking and finance, and from information technology and healthcare to trading, media, power and real estate.
The Hinduja group – which has six publicly traded entities in India — employs more than 150,000 people in 38 countries. Its firms include Ashok Leyland Ltd, Quaker Chemical Corp. and IndusInd Bank Ltd.
Last Friday, London appeal judges lifted reporting restrictions on court hearings centered on Srichand’s health and the care he was receiving.
Judge Anthony Hayden said he’d been troubled by the extent to which Srichand Hinduja had been marginalized by the family.
“He has been demoted to the back row of the court and he will be returned to the front,” the judge said. “Words and platitudes have not been made good.”
During the hearings, the funding from the family dried up to such an extent that lawyers brought in to act independently on behalf of Srichand said they were seriously considering moving him from his private hospital to a National Health Service facility. Gopichand’s lawyers say that more than £5 million had been made available, the Bloomberg report said.