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)...
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