Litigation and Dispute Valuation — Reports Written to Be Cross-Examined

A valuation prepared for a board is read once and acted on. A valuation prepared for a dispute is read by an opposing expert whose job is to find its weakest assumption, then put to the author in cross-examination. The analysis may be identical. The report cannot be.

That difference runs through everything. Assumptions that would pass without comment in a commercial engagement have to be evidenced. Judgements taken by convention have to be justified from the specific facts. Alternatives rejected have to be explained rather than silently discarded. The work is not better than commercial valuation — it is written for a reader who is actively looking for the gaps.

N D Savla & Associates prepares valuation evidence in contested matters across Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane and Goa — shareholder and partnership disputes, matrimonial proceedings, arbitration, insolvency applications and claims for loss. Where the underlying allegations concern diversion or suppression, the forensic examination and the valuation are run together, because one determines the other.

Where Does Dispute Valuation Arise?

What Makes a Dispute Valuation Different?

Independence is the foundation, not a formality. The expert's duty is to the tribunal, not to the instructing party, and it overrides the duty to the client. The report should say so. An expert who advocates rather than opines loses credibility on the first question about an assumption that happens to favour their instructing party, and once lost it is not recovered on the remaining points.

The valuation date is frequently contested. In commercial work the date is agreed; in disputes it is argued. A petitioner alleging oppression will want a date before the conduct depressed the value; a respondent will want the date of the order. In partnership disputes the date of dissolution and the date of the accounts rarely coincide. Where the point is live, valuing at each date and presenting them separately is more useful to the tribunal than choosing one and defending the choice.

Discounts cannot be applied by convention. Whether a minority discount applies in a court-ordered buyout is a question with an established answer in many jurisdictions, and it is generally no. Applying one because the holding is a minority, without addressing why the interest is being valued, is the single most common defect in dispute valuations we review for opposing parties.

The financial record is usually incomplete or contested. Disputes arise precisely where records are poor or where one party controls them. Suppressed revenue, undisclosed related party dealings, diverted funds and unrecorded liabilities all affect normalisation, and establishing them is investigative work rather than valuation work. A valuation built on unexamined financials in a case where the financials are the complaint answers the wrong question.

Every judgement will be tested. Growth assumptions, the comparable set, the discount rate build-up, the treatment of a single contract — each is a point of attack. The working file must support each of them, and the report should state the sensitivity of the conclusion to the assumptions that matter most, because an expert who has not done this will be asked to do it live.

How Did Valuation Evidence Develop in Indian Disputes?

Valuation moved from an incidental question in Indian litigation to the substance of it, and the forums in which it is now argued did not exist a decade ago. The earliest substantial body of Indian valuation jurisprudence came from compulsory acquisition. Under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, compensation turned on market value, and generations of litigation produced principles — the willing buyer and willing seller, the use of comparable sales, deductions for development and for the size of the holding — that still frame valuation reasoning in Indian courts. The expertise, however, sat with acquisition officers and civil courts rather than with a valuation profession.

Company law disputes developed separately. The Companies Act, 1956 provided relief against oppression and mismanagement, and where the remedy was a purchase of the minority holding, the price had to be fixed. Courts and later the Company Law Board approached this pragmatically, frequently appointing an independent valuer and adopting the report with adjustments. A consistent theme emerged early: where the majority is ordered to buy out a minority as relief for its own conduct, discounting for the minority's lack of control is inconsistent with the purpose of the relief.

Partnership and family disputes generated their own line. Goodwill on retirement and dissolution has been litigated in India for over a century, with the super profits and capitalisation methods emerging from that case law rather than from any standard. The recurring lesson is that a partnership deed prescribing a method usually governs, and a valuer instructed without sight of the deed can produce a technically sound report that is legally irrelevant.

Two developments transformed the volume and the scrutiny. The National Company Law Tribunal, constituted in June 2016, consolidated company law and insolvency jurisdiction into a single specialised forum with technical members drawn from accountancy and finance backgrounds — a bench materially better equipped to test a valuation than a generalist civil court. And the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 made fair value and liquidation value the pivot of every resolution process, with the figures argued before committees of creditors and challenged before the tribunal.

Standards followed the scrutiny. The registered valuer framework from 2017 gave the profession qualification requirements and a code of conduct for the first time. Valuations under the Code became subject to binding International Valuation Standards from 1 April 2026, with prescribed report formats from June 2026 requiring stated basis of value, methodology rationale, assumptions and supporting evidence. Reports that would once have been accepted — citing several methods in one document without explaining the weighting — no longer meet the standard, and an opposing expert can now point to a defined requirement rather than merely to preference.

We write for the reader who is looking for gaps. Every assumption evidenced, every alternative addressed, every sensitivity quantified. The discipline is different from commercial valuation and it is the difference between a report that helps and one that becomes a liability.

Forensic and valuation capability in one team. In most disputes the financial record is itself contested. Examining it and valuing on the corrected basis, within the same engagement, produces a stronger position than a valuation built on figures nobody has tested.

We read the deed and the pleadings first. A contractual valuation clause or a prescribed formula frequently governs and displaces independent judgement. Establishing that before starting saves a report that would have been technically sound and legally irrelevant.

Independence maintained and stated. The duty to the tribunal is recorded in the report and observed in the analysis. An expert who is seen to advocate loses the tribunal on the first difficult question, and everything after that is discounted.

Six offices across Maharashtra and Goa. Andheri, Charni Road, Vashi, Thane, New Panvel and Panaji, with the Mumbai bench of the tribunal covering Maharashtra and Goa. Disputes require records to be examined, sites to be visited and conferences held at short notice, and proximity is what makes that workable.