Monday 28 November 2022 09:41 AM Britain's richest family the Hindujas is being torn apart by a Succession-style ... trends now

Family weddings don't come more dazzling than the £15 million extravaganza that saw Srichand Hinduja and his brother Gopichand joined by about 16,000 close friends during February 2015.

The lavish affair celebrated the marriage of Gopichand's 50-year-old son and heir, Sanjay, to a young fashion designer named Anu Mahtani. It lasted three days, and included performances by pop stars Jennifer Lopez and Nicole Scherzinger, plus a host of Bollywood stars.

Guests, whose 208 private jets reportedly left the parking area of Udaipur airport in India's Rajasthan province gridlocked, were transported to the five-star Jagmandir Island Palace hotel, setting of the Bond movie Octopussy, on a fleet of 14 specially decorated boats.

Celebrities, world leaders and India's social and business elite spent their time devouring food from 16 countries, drinking cocktails at historic palaces and witnessing a plethora of fireworks displays and light shows. The dress code was 'Indian classic'. 

It was a spectacular display of wealth by the patriarchs of Britain's richest family, marking the culmination of a 45-year journey via which Srichand and Gopichand, along with their younger brothers Prakash and Ashok, had turned their late father's trading company into a global conglomerate. It is today worth £28 billion and spans not just the subcontinent where they grew up but almost every corner of the world.

During this odyssey, the Hinduja brothers built everything together, operating as what PR men dubbed a sort of 'Fab Four' of the global business elite.

Presenting a united front to the world at large, often wearing matching suits and round glasses, they talked of achieving success via a unique Three Musketeers-style family code where 'everything belongs to everyone and nothing belongs to anyone'. The brothers even shared ownership of various homes. 

Their 18th-century residence in London's Carlton House Terrace, near Buckingham Palace, is made up of four interconnected six-storey buildings, boasts 30 bedrooms, and is worth upwards of £250 million.

Their egalitarian mantra, celebrated at this and other family events, had been inspired by the socio-economic model of 'trusteeship' which was endorsed by Mahatma Gandhi and dovetails neatly with the principles of their Vedic Hindu faith which emphasises good conduct and morality.

For years it was regarded as the central pillar in the success of a corporate empire that now operates in nearly 40 countries, employing almost 200,000 people.

Yet behind the scenes, that pillar has now crumbled. Indeed, even as the Hindujas posed for glamorous photos at the star-studded 2015 wedding, nasty cracks were starting to appear. 

While their wives were comparing saris, gold jewellery and elaborate henna tattoos, the brothers were in the early stages of a fierce dispute that would see the family's dirtiest laundry aired in courtrooms across Europe.

This bitter legal row, spanning Switzerland, Jersey and the High Court in London has for years been kept secret by a small army of expensive lawyers. 

But explosive details became spectacularly public earlier this month via the publication of a court ruling in which a leading British judge raised serious concerns about the welfare of Srichand, who is now 86 and suffering from severe dementia.

Mr Justice Hayden revealed that a family scrap (likened to the battles in the TV series Succession within a warring media business family) over control of the Hinduja firms had so divided the clan that members were unable to agree where the elderly billionaire ought to be treated — or how his medical care should be financed.

This led to a grotesque situation where, despite what the judge aptly described as 'the extraordinary scope and reach of their financial capacity,' Srichand's wealthy relatives had failed to make financial arrangements for their patriarch to be properly looked after in a private medical facility.

In August, the judge revealed, he'd therefore been 'driven to consider' placing one of Britain's wealthiest men in an NHS nursing home.

The whole thing had seen the poor man's health and welfare 'marginalised,' he ruled, saying that a 'private residence with a full care package' was now required for him to achieve 'peace and dignity' during the final chapter of his life.

However, Hayden added, 'such a plan requires a financial settlement to be put in place to ensure the resilience of the care package'. That has not happened, and since 'suitable accommodation and appropriate care' has not been arranged, he is being 'placed at a disadvantage by his own family members' conduct'.

It's an extraordinary, not to mention very sad state of affairs, suggesting that — behind the well-crafted image — the cash-soaked family, which socialises with royals, presidents and prime ministers, has become utterly dysfunctional.

To comprehend how this came to pass, we must wind the clock back to 2014, a year prior to Sanjay's wedding. That was when the four Hinduja brothers, who were entering their 70s and getting various affairs in order, signed a joint letter setting out their aforementioned mantra: that 'everything belongs to everyone and nothing belongs to anyone'.

At least three of the brothers — Gopichand, Prakash and Ashok — seem to have believed the pact set out core principles via which the business empire would be run, not only during the remainder of their lifetimes, but also by future generations. 

In practical terms, they took it to mean that any asset under the sole name of one brother would belong to all four, and that upon their deaths they would act as each other's executors.

Disputes began to arise, however, when Srichand's cognitive decline left him unable to continue effectively running some of the group's companies, seemingly including its Swiss bank.

Believing that his brothers and their immediate heirs were taking steps to manage them instead, Srichand felt that his daughters, Vinoo and Shanu, and their children, were being unfairly sidelined.

Since — in the manner of mega-rich dynasties — almost all of the family's fortune is held by trusts, rather than businesses, his side of the family also became concerned that they were being cut off financially.

Around 2015, Srichand had therefore tried to have the letter they had signed in 2014 set aside. After that failed, the increasingly ailing tycoon, who is known as 'SP,' in 2019 decided to ask the High Court in London to have the arrangement formally annulled.

This move kicked off a blizzard of litigation over control of various Hinduja companies worth billions of pounds between them, which has since been playing out, in virtual secrecy, in several jurisdictions.

Central to this epic falling-out is the fact that, unlike his three brothers, Srichand does not have a living male heir (his only son died in the 1990s).

Because he originally comes from a culture where this still matters — in India only men are traditionally groomed to take over family businesses — this seems to have left him

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