Singh brothers' feud won't impact Fortis Healthcare, says Amit Tandon of IiAS

Shivinder Singh, co-founder of Fortis Healthcare, has filed a case against his brother Malvinder Singh and Religare Enterprises chairman and managing director Sunil Godhwani on Tuesday in the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) court.

Amit Tandon, founder and managing director of Institutional Investor Advisory Services India Limited (IiAS), a proxy advisory firm, spoke to CNBC-TV18 about the implications of the ongoing litigation.

“Plane already has crashed. Whether it is the pilot or the co-pilot responsible doesn’t make much sense. Having said so, what is happening at this stage is that Shivinder is clearly trying to distance himself from the events which had taken place. Whether it is because of his wanting to bolster his image whether it is because of the ongoing saga which is there as far as the arbitration award is concerned, so he is going to ring-fence himself and therefore the burden of that is going to fall on Malvinder Singh is something which is not clear," said Tandon.

"My view is that if he had to speak about some of these issues, the time was six months or a year ago, not at this stage,” he said.

In a letter to the media, Shivinder broke his silence and said that while he was away at his spiritual home at Beas, ‘red flags crept up in the group with disturbing regularity,’ and referred to the Ranbaxy-Daiichi arbitration case as ‘one of the most damaging cases in the history of India Inc.’

“Till such time that Shivinder Singh was running Fortis, it was in a growth mode. It is only after that that some of the problems surfaced. The second is that, as I mentioned, there is an arbitration award, money needs to be paid to the Japanese and how much of the burden falls on each of the two brothers could well be what is determined as a consequence of this litigation,” Tandon added.

Talking about the implication of Shivinder's letter on Fortis business, Tandon said, “I don’t see it having any implication on the entity. It has gone, you have got IHH as an investor at the other stage. Therefore I don’t think it is going to impact it in any meaningful way."