“The Delhi High Court has allowed Daiichi Sankyo to enforce an international arbitration award here so that it can recover Rs 3,500 crore from former Ranbaxy promoters Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, marking a victory for the Japanese company. A Singapore tribunal had said the brothers needed to pay the money for concealing information related to wrongdoing at Ranbaxy, once India’s largest drug maker, when Daiichi acquired it from the brothers for $4.6 billion in 2008,” reported the Economic Times.

P&A Law Offices acted for Daiichi Sankyo, led by managing partner Anand S Pathak, partner Amit Kumar Mishra, principal associate Akshat Hansaria, senior associates Abhijeet Sinha and Mohit Singh and associates Akshay Puri and Samridhi Hota. Senior advocates Gopal Subramanium, Arvind Nigam and Arun Kathpalia argued before the court.

DMD Advocates senior partner Anuradha Dutt acted for the Singh brothers, instructing senior advocate Harish Salve.

Before the Singapore ICC tribunal, Daiichi had nominated Karyl Nairn QC as arbitrator, while Malvinder Singh had nominated AM Ahmadi, a former Chief Justice of India; the ICC had appointed Professor Lawrence Boo of The Arbitration Chambers, Singapore as president of the arbitral tribunal, which had handed down its in April 2016.

The enforcement of the award had been appealed later in 2016 in the Delhi high court.

The high court heard the parties over six months and reserved judgment in September 2017. In a 115 page verdict pronounced on 31 January 2018 the court noted:

Based on the evidence on record the Arbitral Tribunal concluded that at the time of due diligence meeting that took place on 26.5.2008 it was beyond reasonable doubt that Mr.Malvinder, Mr. Kaul and Mr.Deshmukh were aware about SAR and believed that it had triggered both the US investigations and that Ranbaxy was very seriously exposed… The Arbitral Tribunal concluded that it is beyond reasonable doubt that Mr.Malvinder, Mr.Kaul and Mr.Deshmukh acted fraudulently and dishonestly misleading the petitioner/claimant [Daiichi Sankyo] about the genesis, nature and severity of the US Regulatory investigations and deliberately concealed SAR from the claimants [Daiichi Sankyo].