[Srishti Multani and Aryan Birewar are 4th year BBA LLB (Hons.) students at Symbiosis Law School, Pune] On 27 March 2024, the Reserve Bank of India (‘RBI’) released a notification (‘Revised Notification’) relaxing certain directions given to regulated entities (‘RE’) in the notification (‘Previous Notification’) dated 19 December 2023 after due consultation with the stakeholders and industry...
Extinguishment of Personal Guarantee in Resolution Plan under the IBC
[Karnika Singh Pasayat and Vignaraj Pasayat are advocates practising in the Supreme Court of India and the High Court of Delhi] The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), New Delhi Bench, recently rendered a ruling in Puro Naturals JV v. Warana Sahakari Bank (Company Appeal (AT) (Insolvency) Nos.661-663 of 2023 dated November 24, 2023)on whether to approve a resolution plan that Puro...
Demystifying Overlap in Collective Investment Schemes and Joint Ownership Structures
[Mihir Vashishtha is a final year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student at National University of Study and Research in Law, Ranchi] With the rise of digitization in the capital market, there has been a notable surge in interaction between retail investors and the market, leading to increased investment activity. In turn, this increased digitization has incentivized market players to develop investment...
Distribution of Profits Accrued During CIRP: An Equitable Approach Towards Settlement of Claims
[Karthika S. Babu is a third-year B.A. LL.B. Student at Gujarat National Law University] The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (“Code”) provides for a specialized mechanism, i.e., the corporate insolvency resolution process (“CIRP”) for the resolution of insolvency of financially distressed entities. The CIRP aims to mitigate the claims of the affected creditors against the distressed...
Navigating the Twilight Zone Conundrum: A Cautionary Tale for Restructured Preference Shareholders
[Snigdha and Subhasish Pamegam are 3rd year B.A., LL.B. students at Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar] The practice of companies issuing restructured preference shares (RPS) in exchange for operational debt during the ‘twilight zone’, a period wherein a company is susceptible to becoming insolvent, is now seen as a controversial strategy. The order of the National Company Law Tribunal...
Regulating Big Tech: India Joins the Club
[Vikas Kathuria is the Director of the ASCOLA-India Chapter and Professor at the School of Law, BML Munjal University, India. He is also an editor of the IndiaCorpLaw Blog] India is all set to join the growing number of countries that have crafted level-playing rules for Big Tech firms. The Committee on Digital Competition Law (CDCL), which was constituted by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs to...
Banking on Banks for Natural Justice
In a judgement pronounced earlier this month, the Bombay High Court re-emphasized the requirements of natural justice to be followed by banks when designating a borrower who has defaulted on debt as a ‘willful defaulter’. This judgement is in line with the jurisprudence laid down by the Supreme Court and multiple High Courts on banks declaring borrowers as ‘willful’ defaulters in exercise of the...
Calcutta High Court on Jurisdiction in Shareholder Disputes under Companies Act: An Aberration?
[Abhijnan Jha is a Partner and Urvashi Misra a Senior Associate at AZB & Partners, New Delhi] It is trite law that where a statute prescribes something to be done in a particular manner, then it ought to be done in that manner alone and not in any other manner. This is a well-recognized position, with courts having the duty to filter out any misguided attempts by litigants to bypass statutory...
Holding-Subsidiary Relationship: The Legal & Regulatory Architecture
[Bharat Vasani is Senior Advisor – Corporate Laws and Miloni Mau an Associate in the General Corporate Practice, both at the Mumbai office of Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas. An earlier version of this post was published on the Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas Blog] As their businesses grow, companies operate through their subsidiaries for various reasons such as flexibility in operation of different units...
Reining in Big-Tech Ex-Ante : The Indian Edition
[Manjushree RM (Senior Resident Fellow), Meha Chandra (Project Fellow), Anuradha Bhattacharya (Project Fellow), Vallari Dronamraju (Research Fellow) and Urvi Pathak (Research Fellow) are with Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, and were engaged by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs in preparing the CDCL Report] On 12 March 2024, the Committee on Digital Competition Law (‘CDCL/ Committee’) presented its...
Recall of Approved Plan: Reconsideration of Judgment?
[Aditya Vaid is a third-year law student at Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat and Hrishikesh Goswami is a third-year law student at the Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar] The corporate insolvency resolution process (‘CIRP’) is a recovery mechanism through which the creditors of a corporate debtor may seek to rehabilitate the company with a view to recovering their debt. The CIRP aims...
Venture Capital’s Tryst with Tax: Revisiting the Debate on Carry
[Bhaskar Vishwajeet and Abhinav Shankarraman are final year law students at Jindal Global Law School] The Karnataka High Court recently overruled a Customs, Excise, Service Tax Appellate Tribunal (“CESTAT”) order (page 4) on the service tax status of venture capital trusts (“VCTs”), declaring that service tax is not applicable to VCTs as they are pass-through structures. The authors argue that...
Interim Measures in Oppression & Mismanagement Proceedings: The Encroachment of Third-Party Rights
[Abhijnan Jha is a Partner, Urvashi Misra a Senior Associate, and Anant Narayan Misra an Associate, all at AZB & Partners, New Delhi] In contentious corporate litigation, much depends on interim measures. A victory at the interim stage becomes a turning point for most parties. This is particularly true for shareholder disputes, which become a battle to retain the company’s control. A...
The Uncertain Fate of Arbitrations Terminated under Section 29A of the Arbitration and Conciliation, 1996
[Sanjana Muraleedharan is a Senior Associate at Keystone Partners, Bengaluru] A division bench of the Supreme Court is set to examine the position on termination of the mandate of an arbitrator where the application for extension under section 29A(5) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (‘Act’) was not filed prior to termination of the mandate. The Special Leave Petition in Rohan...
Settling the Jurisdictional Conundrum: Navigating the App Developers v. Google Judgement
[Sanjana Rebecca Samuel is a 4th year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student at Symbiosis Law School, Pune] On 19 January 2024, the Madras High Court dismissed the suit filed by several app developers against Google. The developers asserted that Google’s policies within the Play Store contravened stipulations and directives outlined in the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007 (“PSS Act”). Additionally...
Can SAT Function Without the Presence of a “Judicial Member”? Has the Conundrum Been Resolved?
[Ravishekhar Pandey and Amarpal Singh Dua are independent securities law practitioners] On 29 December 2023, Justice Tarun Agarwala retired and demitted office as the Presiding Officer (PO) of the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT), which hears appeals against orders passed by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI)...
Navigating the Choppy Waters of Anti-trust Regulation in the Maritime Industry
[Aditya Trivedi is an Associate with the Competition Advisory Services (India) LLP, New Delhi and an LL.M. student in Competition Law & Economics at the Brussels School of Competition and Vanshika Arora is a 4th Year B.A.LL.B. student at the Army Institute of Law, Mohali] In the vast tapestry of India’s economic landscape, the maritime sector stands as a pivotal contributor, shaping the...
Inherent Powers of the NCLT to Recall an Insolvency Resolution Plan
The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC) lays emphasis on an elaborate process by which a corporate insolvency resolution plan (CIRP) can be proposed, considered, decided, and approved. The principal actors involved in the process include the resolution professional, the committee of creditors (CoC) and the adjudicating authority (being the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) and, on...
Will Insolvency Drown Under the Crown’s Weight? Addressing Differential Debt Treatment under the IBC
[Deep Dighe is an Advocate practicing in the Bombay High Court] The question of statutory dues or crown debts (as they were previously known under the colonial regime) and their interplay with the corporate insolvency law in India has been an issue that has drawn the attention of all stakeholders to it. Much ink has been spilled about the contrasting Supreme Court judgments on the treatment of...
Open Questions on RBI’s Enforcement Actions in Indian Fintech
“God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there’s no turning back.” – Gloria Steinem Over the last month and a half, the enforcement actions of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) with respect to Paytm and in relation to certain payment arrangements through corporate cards have raised substantive questions of law, facts and due process. This...
Electoral Bonds Deemed Unconstitutional: Granular Electoral Finance Reforms Needed?
[Bhaskar Vishwajeet and Abhinav Shankarraman are final year law students at Jindal Global Law School] The recent judgement of the Supreme Court in Association for Democratic Reforms v. Union of India has stirred the hornet’s nest on electoral financing in India. At the heart of this judgement lay the controversy surrounding unlimited corporate funding of political parties. The judgment of the...
SEBI Greenlights Pledging of Equity Investments by Alternative Investment Funds
[Prachya J. Bhattacharya and Sahsransh Pandey are 3rd year students at Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar] In an effort to foster the consistent growth of alternative investment funds (AIFs), the Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI) introduced a consultation paper on 2 February 2024. The paper aims to allow AIFs to create encumbrance on their equity holdings in infrastructure...
Disclosure Dilemma: Streamlining Disclosures for Smoother FPI Flow
[Isha Sharma is a 4th year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student from Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar] The Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”), as the primary authority overseeing the Indian securities market, regularly reviews and updates regulatory frameworks to harmonize the evolving market dynamics with the best global practices. In 2023, SEBI introduced significant amendments...
Whether a “Sale of Shares” Amounts to a “Sale of an Undertaking”: Has the Conundrum Been Resolved?
[Bharat Vasani is Senior Advisor – Corporate Laws and Varun Kannan an Associate in the General Corporate Practice, both at the Mumbai office of Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas. An earlier version of this post was published on the Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas Blog] “What would constitute an ‘undertaking’ of a company” has been among the most hotly debated topics in the history of India’s company law regime...
Personal Data Breach Notifications as UPSI(?): A Safe Haven for Insider Trading
[Fathima Rena Abdulla is a 3rd-year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student at NUALS, Kochi] Stock market responses to cybersecurity breaches have consistently triggered negative outcomes and, consequently, opportunistic insider trading. Through timely selling before public breach announcements, insiders employ various tactics, including buying put options, making profits, or avoiding losses from the...
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