Sarwar & Ors v Sarwar & Anor [2026] EWHC 2104 (Ch)

Family Business Dispute Shows Why Mediation Matters

Family accused their son of forging documents to take their business. The judge believed the son instead. Unfair prejudice petition fails.
 
Mohammed Sarwar and his wife Robina Kausar built the Cambridge Hotel in Huddersfield from 1993 later expanding into several more hotels, including sites housing residents placed and funded by local authorities.

Their youngest son, Bilal, worked full time in the business from 2010 and was made a director in 2018. By 2025, tensions had grown as other family members became more involved in management, which Bilal felt undermined the years he had put into building the business, and he pushed for a formal division.

A business division agreement was reached, and shortly afterwards Mohammed and Robina ceased to be shareholders and directors, and Bilal became sole shareholder of the company under a Share Swap Agreement and a signed stock transfer form.

Mohammed, Robina and their daughter Shahelah brought an unfair prejudice petition under section 994 of the Companies Act 2006, alleging that the transfer documents had been forged or fraudulently produced and that they had never truly agreed to give up their shares or their positions as directors.
 
Not according to the judge! After nine days of evidence, including expert handwriting and computer forensic evidence, he found that the evidence of the family witnesses on all sides was, in his words, fundamentally unreliable and tainted by their strong feelings and reconstruction of events, and instead placed most weight on the contemporaneous documents and the expert evidence. He concluded that the division agreement was genuine, that the Share Swap Agreement and stock transfer form were authentic. Because Mohammed and Robina had validly transferred away their shares and resigned as directors, the petition failed on every basis including that once they were no longer shareholders, they had no standing to complain about how Bilal subsequently ran the business.
 
Nothing in the judgment suggests the family ever attempted mediation, despite this being, at its heart, a succession dispute that had been building within the family for well over a decade before it reached a nine day trial complete with forgery allegations and forensic document evidence.

In my experience as a mediator, family business disputes like this one, where the real issues are about recognition, fairness between siblings and how a parent hands over control, are often better resolved around a table than in a witness box. A skilled mediator can often help a family test the strength of feeling and the practical options before allegations of forgery are put to each other in open court, with all the cost and lasting damage to family relationships and reputation that entails.

Sarwar & Ors v Sarwar & Anor [2026] EWHC 2104 (Ch)

Judgment: https://lnkd.in/eZd396Wm