Blog Posts
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Revised Limited Liability Partnership Bill on the Horizon
[Posted by Umakanth Varottil] A revised bill on Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs) has been approved by the Union Cabinet, reports The Economic Times. The LLP Bill is set to be introduced in Parliament soon. The establishment of LLPs would enable professional services firms, such as those constituted by chartered accountants and lawyers, to carry on…
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Draft Report on Commodity Futures
[Posted by Umakanth Varottil] One of the reasons ascribed to the recent price rise in India is the introduction and expansion of the commodities futures markets. This has, however, been partly put to rest if one were to go by the observations contained in the draft report of the Expert Committee on Commodity Futures Trading…
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A Weak Start to Short Selling
[Posted by Umakanth Varottil] Although short sales were allowed to commence last week (on April 21, 2008), the response thus far has been lukewarm. Various reasons have been offered for this result. The Hindu Business Line reports that market players attributed the poor response to bad timing, to relatively higher margin requirements for securities lending…
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Corporate Governance & Enforcement
[Posted by Umakanth Varottil] The corporate governance norms prescribed by SEBI were tightened earlier this month (as discussed here), whereby the requirement of independence of directors has been made more stringent. However, it is disheartening to note that while there is a move by the regulator to enhance mandatory norms on corporate governance at a…
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REMFs: The New Indian Real Estate Investment Opportunity
[Posted by Umakanth Varottil] It was back in 2006 that SEBI had cleared the deck for the launch of real estate mutual funds (REMFs) as means to enable retail investors to take advantage of the enhancement in Indian property prices. For almost two years, there were no concrete steps taken to promulgate regulations for the…
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Success of Venture Capital Investments in India
[Posted by Umakanth Varottil] One of our readers, Aravind Balajee, brings to our attention this story from VC Circle. It relates to a tremendously successful exit by a venture capital investor, UTI Ventures, from an Indian portfolio company, Excelsoft Technologies Pvt. Ltd. The details are here: “There is a thing or two to learn from…
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Role of Law and Politics in India’s Economic Growth
[Posted by Umakanth Varottil] There is a recent paper titled “Law, Finance, and Politics: The Case of India” by John Armour and Priya Lele that has been posted on SSRN. The authors join the debate as to whether a country’s legal origins (e.g. common law or civil law) necessarily have an impact on the extent…
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New Merger Norms for Telcos
[Posted by Umakanth Varottil] The Indian telecommunications industry has witnessed significant consolidation over the last few years, with several large scale investments and mergers having occurred in this space. The Department of Telecommunications (DOT) has now issued Guidelines for intra-circle merger of licencees, which seek to strengthen DOT’s control and oversight of such mergers. While…
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Disclosure Norms for Law Firms
[Posted by Umakanth Varottil] So far, public listings of securities by law firms has not caught on despite the first law firm (Australia’s Slater & Gordon) listing about a year ago. The legal practice regulations in most jurisdictions do not permit law firms to either take a corporate form or to issue its securities to…
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SEBI Pricing Norms & Private Equity
[Posted by Umakanth Varottil] When the market prices of companies in India are lower than what they were a few months ago, they would obviously be attractive to private equity funds and similar investors. However, the SEBI minimum pricing norms as set out in Chapter XIII of the SEBI (Disclosure & Investor Protection) Guidelines, 2000…