Blog Posts
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More Uncertainty in the Law on Penalties
Earlier posts have noted and examined a few recent decisions of the Supreme Court and the ITAT on the law governing the imposition of penalties under the Income Tax Act, 1961. In what is perhaps the best restatement of the position of law today, the Pune Bench of the ITAT appears to have altered the…
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Mobile number portability on the horizon
Mobile number portability (MNP) enables mobile telephone users to retain their mobile numbers when changing from one mobile network to another. Often, the only reason that keeps customers from changing operators is the lack of number portability. The inconvenience of having to change phone numbers on business cards and other documents, informing contacts of new…
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Corporate Governance and Protection of Minority Shareholders
Corporate law and corporate governance norms are devised to address certain agency problems (as they are known in economic terms). In countries where there is diffused shareholding (such as the U.S. and the U.K.), the agency problem that is prevalent is one between managers (the agent) and shareholders (the principal). Diffused shareholding gives rise to…
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Obama’s ‘Taxing’ Proposals
On Monday (4th May, 2009), the United States President, Barrack Obama announced the proposed implementation of another one of his election promises, targeted towards improving the domestic economic climate, and freeing up financial resources for investment in areas of pressing importance. The proposal is to withdraw the scheme of deferred tax for foreign income, currently…
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Law Firm Practices and the Global Financial Crisis
The current issue of Knowledge@Wharton carries an article Legal Strategy 101: It’s Time for Law Firms to Re-think Their Business Model that looks at the impact of the global financial crisis on law firm practices around the world, and considers possible strategies available to law firms and their clients to weather the storm. The fundamental…
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Squeezing Out Minority Shareholders: A Recent Judgment
st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } The question of squeezing out minority shareholders (also known as freezeouts in some jurisdictions) is always a vexed question. This is because the law in certain circumstances allows minority shareholders to be forcibly bought out by the majority shareholders or the company such that they are forced out of the company. The controversy…
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India and China: Foreign Investment and Venture Capital
RBI/2008-09/ RBI/2008-09/ The Asian Journal of Comparative Law has just published an interesting article that compares foreign direct investment (FDI) and venture capital investment in the two Asian economic giants. In Unraveling the Puzzle of Differing Rates of FDI and FVCI in India and China the authors Haitian Lu, Hong Huang and Swati Deva find…
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Recent RBI Policies
RBI/2008-09/ The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced some policies last week. The salient features are as follows: 1. External Commercial Borrowings (ECB) Policy – Liberalisation By a Circular dated January 2, 2009, the RBI dispensed with the requirement of all-in-cost ceilings on ECBs under the approval route, until June 30, 2009. This relaxation…
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Indian Acquisitions Abroad
(In the following post, Rajvendra Sarswat, an Indian lawyer, examines the current trends in acquisition activity in India, with particular reference to overseas acquisitions by Indian companies) The news of an Indian company making any global acquisition or financing any project might have been surprising few years back, but not anymore. In the year 2006,…
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Writing off Bad Debts and Tax Liability
The treatment of bad debts has been a constant source of disagreement between financial institutions and the Tax Department. Banks typically argued that some advances were so unlikely to be recovered that they may justifiably be regarded as “sticky” advances, and that interest on these advances should not be treated as income for the purposes…
