New Delhi: The Supreme Court Tuesday restrained till October 28 the Shapoorji Pallonji (SP) group and Cyrus Mistry from pledging or transferring their shares in Tata Sons Pvt Ltd (TSPL).
A bench comprising Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian also directed the Tata Sons and the SP Group not to take any further action on the shares which have already been pledged till October 28, the next date of hearing.
The SP group, which owns 18.37 per cent in Tata Sons, had said TSPL moved the top court to block its plan to pledge shares for raising funds and that reeked of vindictiveness and oppression of minority shareholder rights.
On September 5, Tata Sons had moved the top court seeking to restrain the Mistry group from raising capital against their shares. Through the plea, the Tatas had sought to prevent the SP Group from creating any direct or indirect pledge of shares.
The SP Group was planning to raise Rs 11,000 crore from various funds and had signed a deal with a marquee Canadian investor for Rs 3,750 crore in the first tranche against a portion of its 18.37 per cent stake in Tata Sons.
The SP Group share holding in the country’s largest business house is valued at over Rs 1 lakh crore. In a hearing conducted through video conferencing, the top court said that it would hear the plea after four weeks and “in the meantime, parties shall maintain status quo regarding pledging/transfer of shares”.
“We will say status quo on transferring/pledging and any further action with regard to transfer/pledge already made,” the bench said. Senior advocate CA Sundaram, appearing for the SP group, said they were being stopped from pledging the shares and “it is creating havoc for me”.
On the other hand, senior advocate Harish Salve, representing TSPL, said that the point was “something else” as the TSPL has a right to buy the share at market price, but the SP group was pledging them. Earlier, the TSPL had told the top court that it was not a ‘two-group company’ and there was no ‘quasi-partnership’ between it and Cyrus Investments Pvt Ltd.