The billionaire Hinduja brothers – Gopichand Hinduja, co-chairman of the Hinduja Group, along with Prakash, Srichand, and Ashok, have agreed to end the family dispute that was tearing the once tightly knit British-Indian group apart.
According to a Bloomberg report, the conflict among the brothers was because of a pact signed by them in 2014 that said that 'everything belongs to everyone and nothing belongs to anyone.’
The three other brothers had claimed that the letter governed the succession planning for the century-old conglomerate, a declaration that was challenged by Srichand’s descendants, who claimed that his branch of the family was being sidelined in the group.
That battle ended after lawyers for Gopichand Hinduja said in June that the family had agreed to effectively tear up the arrangement.
With the end of the pact, however, the stage may now be set for the break up of one of the biggest conglomerates in the world.
With dozens of companies — including six publicly traded entities in India — the Hinduja Group employs more than 150,000 people in 38 countries in truck-making, banking, chemicals, power, media and health care. Its firms include Ashok Leyland Ltd., Quaker Chemical Corp. and IndusInd Bank Ltd.
With a collective net worth of about $14 billion that would make the family the wealthiest in the UK according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the four brothers had always presented a united front, with little to suggest that not all was well in the House of Hinduja.
A UK court filing in June 2020 revealed that a dispute had started between the eldest sibling Srichand, 86, with his three younger brothers over the ownership of a Geneva bank of the group. The conflict among brothers also cropped up over control of a bank that they have in Switzerland (Hinduja Bank).
