Abhishek Singhvi joins Tata Trusts as Tata Sons dispute heads for court
Abhishek Singhvi has joined Tata Trusts in the escalating dispute with Tata Sons. He says the standoff now raises serious questions over shareholder rights and governance.
Senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi, who has been appointed to represent Tata Trusts, said on Sunday that he was entering the dispute with "sadness and regret" because the issues had not been resolved amicably.
In a post on X, Singhvi said the fundamental rights of shareholder-owners could not be nullified in the way they had been, and warned that the matter now appeared headed for a legal resolution.
"Having worked closely with Ratan Tata earlier, being aware of his legacy and not only knowing personally all the principal actors on both sides in the current so-called Tata dispute but also having deep, genuine and abiding respect for and excellent equations with all of them, my first reaction, as I enter the fray as the lead lawyer for one side, is one of sadness and regret that these issues could not be solved amicably," Singhvi said.
The dispute has come amid differences over key decisions at Tata Sons. The Tata Sons board has backed a further five-year term for Natarajan Chandrasekaran, despite opposition from Noel Tata and a challenge by the Trusts to the validity of the decision. The board has also favoured moving ahead with a public listing after the Reserve Bank of India rejected the company’s application to surrender its registration as an upper-layer non-banking financial company.
Tata Trusts, which collectively control about 66 per cent of Tata Sons, have opposed the listing, with chairman Noel Tata urging the company to explore alternatives. Singhvi said restricting shareholder-ownership rights in this manner would spell "doomsday" for corporate governance across hundreds of Indian companies. He also said that blocking democratic decision-making within Tata Trusts by placing a sudden and completely unwarranted fetter on even convening a meeting was a separate issue of clear legality.
"Rupturing the over hundred years of Tata Trust and Tata Sons established hyphenated relationship and divorcing one from the other seems unthinkable. Ignoring the unvarying precondition of Trust unanimity in voting & the clear veto in provisions applied without cavil for decades appears patently unjustified. Sadly, the Supreme Court judgement in Tata-Mistry which clearly gave Tata Trusts primacy in the relationship with Tata Sons, upheld the special Articles in this regard in the Tata Sons articles and spoke of the fiduciary duty to millions of Indians, seems to have been selectively forgotten," he said.
Singhvi said that, in the absence of collegiality and conviviality, these and many related issues could now only have legal solutions, underscoring the widening differences between Tata Trusts and Tata Sons over governance and the company’s future course.