New Delhi: The Delhi High Court is expected to pronounce its judgment this week in the long-running Daiichi Sankyo arbitration case, after reserving the matter at the close of its 50th hearing in May.
Japanese drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo is seeking enforcement of an arbitration award in its favour against former Fortis promoters Malvinder and Shivinder Mohan Singh over alleged fraud in the 2008 sale of their pharma company Ranbaxy Laboratories to the Japanese firm. Including interest, the amount awarded by a Singapore tribunal a decade ago has now swelled to ₹5,200 crore.
To secure payment, Daiichi wanted to prevent the Singh brothers from diluting their stake in Fortis, but lenders invoked and sold the brothers’ pledged shares to recover debt. The case has effectively become a three-way contest among the Singh brothers, lenders and Fortis over who bears responsibility for shrinking assets of Singh brothers.
Daiichi, represented by senior advocate Arvind Nigam and advocate Giriraj Subramanium, questioned deals involving Fortis’ stake, including sale of 186 million encumbered shares, terming them deliberate asset.
“18.6 crore shares were encumbered by financial institutions and banks-disclosures made, uploaded by the company and sold, leaving 13.99 crore shares, which were unencumbered and sold in transactions with the approval of the compliance officer at a point of time when the FHL was an entity of the judgment debtors,” Nigam argued before the bench of Justice Subramonium Prasad.
During the last hearing, Fortis counsel said that “FHL and its compliance officer never gave any approval to any of these transfers”.
