[Harsh Patidar is a 3rd year B.A.LL.B. (Hons.) student and Monish Raghuwanshi a 2nd year B.A.LL.B. (Hons.) student, both at National Law Institute University, Bhopal] Section 4 of the Competition Act, 2002 prohibits one or more enterprises from abusing its dominant position in the market to determine the price, supply, amount of production and distribution, by acting independently of their...
SC uses ‘Smoke-Test’ to Classify ‘Related Parties’ under the IBC
[Sikha Bansal is a Partner and Megha Mittal an Associate at Vinod Kothari & Company. Another set of posts on the topic is available here] Generally, in order to classify a transaction as a related party transaction, one needs to first determine whether the parties involved are ‘related parties’. However, in a recent case Phoenix Arc Private Limited v. Spade Financial Services Limited &...
The Ineligibility of Collusive Transactions as “Financial Debt”: Part II
[Continued from here] Analysis and Observations Through its decision in Phoenix Arc, the Supreme Court has added to the wealth of jurisprudence under the IBC. At the same time, several questions remain. Collusive Transactions Perhaps the broadest and most impactful interpretation of the Court lies in the question of whether collusive transactions give rise at all to “financial debt” within the...
The Ineligibility of Collusive Transactions as “Financial Debt”: Part I
[Another post on this topic is available here]A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India on 1 February 2021 rendered important and interesting pronouncements on some aspects of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC) in Phoenix Arc Private Limited v Spade Financial Services Limited. Speaking through Dr. Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, J, the Court ruled that a collusive transaction cannot...
NCLAT on Whether Entries in Balance Sheet are an Acknowledgment of Debt
[Mohak Thukral is a IV year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student at the Jindal Global Law School] According to an order in Bishal Jaiswal v Asset Reconstruction Company (India) Ltd (dated December 22, 2020), a five-member bench of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (“NCLAT”) rejected a reference order made by a three-member bench for the reconsideration of the decision in V. Padmakumar v...
Straining Conceptual Consistency: Home Buyers as Financial Creditors
[M P Ram Mohan is Associate Professor, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and Vishakha Raj a Research Associate, Strategy Area, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. This post is based on the authors’ article Apartment Buyers as Financial Creditors: Pushing the Conceptual Limits of the Indian Insolvency Regime published in the Columbia Journal of Asian Law] A unique feature of the...
Supreme Court on Arbitration Agreements and Stamp Duty: Hits and Misses
[Rohan Deshpande practices as a Counsel at the Bombay High Court, and Karan Kamath is an Advocate practicing at Mumbai] On January 11, 2020, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court in NN Global Mercantile Pvt. Ltd. v. Indo Unique Flame Ltd. opined that the declaration of law on arbitration agreements contained in contracts which were subject to insufficient stamp duty required reconsideration...
Flat Buyer’s Right To Claim Compensation For Delay In Handing Over Possession
[Ashish Singh is an Advocate and Former Managing Associate at L&L partners and Megha Shaw is a 4th year student at NUJS, Kolkata] Delays in handing over the possession of flats has become a rampant practice in the Indian real estate industry, due to which numerous innocent home buyers are being penalized. Such home buyers are not only left in the lurch without delivery of possession of their...
Bhaven Construction Case: Expounding the Tussle between Constitutional Right and Arbitral Process
[Prince Todi is a 4th year student at Hidayatullah National Law University, Raipur] India’s tryst with arbitration has been a long tale of legislative amendments and remedial judicial decisions. Various steps have been taken, time and again, to make India a friendly jurisdiction and achieve conformity with the international norms. Accordingly, the principles of party autonomy, minimal court...
Analysis of CCI’s Market Study on the Indian Telecom Sector
[Bhavisha Sharma and Gayathri Pillai are IV year BA.LLB. (Hons.) students at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad] On 22 January 2021, the Competition Commission of India (“CCI”) released a Market Study on the Telecom Sector in India (“Report”) which summarises the recent trends witnessed in the telecom sector (“Sector”). This post summarises the key competition issues identified and...
Online Certificate Course on the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016
[Announcement on behalf of BR Foundation] BR Foundation is conducting an online certificate course on the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 from February 26, 2021 to March 1, 2021. The Media Partner for the course is IBC Law Reporter. This is an annual 4-day course on Corporate Restructuring and Insolvency, especially focusing on the developments in the insolvency regime in India and the major...
Social Stock Exchange in India: Scrutinizing the Vision
[Prachi Agrawal is a 4th year B.B.A., LL.B. (Business Law Hons.) student and Stuti Bhargava a 4th year B.A., LL.B (Business Law Hons.) student, both at the National Law University, Jodhpur] “It is time to take our capital markets closer to the masses and meet various social welfare objectives related to inclusive growth and financial inclusion.”– Nirmala Sitharaman In her budget speech in...
Validity of Arbitration Clause in Unstamped Instruments: The Saga Continues
[Abhishek Mishra is an alumnus of Symbiosis Law School, Pune and practices at the Delhi High Court] By way of its judgment dated January 11, 2021 in N.N. Global Mercantile Pvt. Ltd. v. Indo Unique Flame Ltd., the Supreme Court reopened the seemingly settled issue of whether non-payment of stamp duty on a contract will invalidate the constituent arbitration clause as well. Due to contrary...
FIU’s Penalty on PayPal: The Wisdom of Jurisprudence by Committee
Last week, the Supreme Court’s order constituting a committee to settle the ongoing farmer agitation was critiqued across the entire spectrum of left-to-right wing commentary. At about the same time, in a case involving PayPal, a popular online payment gateway service in India, the Delhi High Court passed an order directing the Finance Ministry to set up a committee to address the following...
Andhra High Court Rejects Insider Trading Claims on Land
Rooted in preserving market integrity, the concept of insider trading emerged and has been ingrained in the context of the securities markets. Despite the well-understood nature of the subject-matter of insider trading, a question recently arose on whether the offence can be extended to the purchase and sale of land. In Chekka Guru Murali Mohan v. The State of Andhra Pradesh (decided 19 January...
Pump and Dump? SEBI Order against TV Anchor and Family
In a somewhat unconventional interim order, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) issued a series of directions against CNBC Awaaz anchor Hemant Ghai, his wife Jaya Hemant Ghai and his mother Shyam Mohini Ghai. SEBI’s preliminary examination of prices of certain stocks indicated a pattern of trading that potentially violated the SEBI Act, 1992 and the SEBI (Prohibition of Fraudulent...
China’s Claim concerning App Ban Under International Investment and Trade Law – Part II
[Angeline Priety and Rohin Goyal are fourth-year law students at Gujarat National Law University] In Part I of this post, we explained the possible recourse that Chinese investors may have against India’s app ban under the Indo-China Bilateral Investment Treaty (“BIT”). In Part II, we shall first examine India’s possible defence against claims by Chinese investors under the Indo-China BIT and...
China’s Claim concerning App Ban Under International Investment and Trade Law – Part I
[Angeline Priety and Rohin Goyal are fourth-year law students at Gujarat National Law University] On September 2, 2020, India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology released a press note banning 118 mobile applications of Chinese origin. This blocking order, the third such order in a span of two months, was prompted by concerns with respect to the sovereignty of India, particularly...
A Need to Revisit the SEBI (Intermediaries) Regulations, 2008
[Pallavi Mishra is a 5th year student at Hidayatullah National Law University] The Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) notified the SEBI (Intermediaries) Regulations, 2008 were notified as an attempt to consolidate various laws governing the market intermediaries in India. These regulations lay down the common procedural compliances and adjudicatory mechanisms. They are enforced along...
Vidya Drolia Case: Final Chapter in the Arbitrability of Fraud Saga?
[Sumit Chatterjee and Rajashri Seal are students at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore] On 14 December 2020, the Indian Supreme Court delivered its judgement in Vidya Drolia v. Durga Trading Corporation (‘Vidya Drolia’), addressing a host of issues pertaining to the domestic arbitration framework in India. By laying down a definitive checklist to determine whether a particular...
Future-Amazon Case and the Bumpy Road to Emergency Arbitrations in India
[Aakanksha Jadhav and Mustafa Rajkotwala are 3rd year B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) students at NUJS, Kolkata and NALSAR, Hyderabad, respectively] In a significant boost to party autonomy in India, the Delhi High Court explicitly recognised the compatibility of emergency arbitrations with the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (the ‘Act’) in the recent decision in Future Retail Limited v. Amazon...
A Review of “Investment Funds in India – A Legal Handbook”
[Ganesh Rao is a partner at Trilegal] Alok Verma and Karan Trehan’s Investment Funds in India – A Legal Handbook focuses on the legal regime governing investment funds in India and, in doing so, is probably one of the first books to be published in this field. The Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (“SEBI”) SEBI (Alternative Investment Funds) Regulations, 2012 (“AIF Regulations”) are...
Decluttering the 2020 Amendment to the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996
[Animesh Bordoloi is an Assistant Lecturer at the Jindal Global Law School and Hitoishi Sarkar is a III year student at the Gujarat National Law University] The recent Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020 (“Ordinance”), which amended section 36, has once again put the Indian arbitration discourse in the center stage. In a rarity, the ordinance reverses the 2015...
Self-Assessment of Non-Compete Clauses: The New Normal
[Pranshu Gupta and Roopam Dadhich are 4th year B.A.LL.B. (Hons.) students at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad] On 26 November 2020, the Competition Commission of India (‘CCI’) introduced an amendment to the CCI (Procedure in regard to the transaction of business relating to combinations) Regulations, 2011 (‘Combination Regulations’), through which para 5.7 of Form I has been deleted making it...
Stay on NCLAT Order Rejecting Withdrawal of Resolution Plan – Unsettling the Dust Once Again
[Richa Pathak is an alumna of the London School of Economics and Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and Mansi Mishra is a fourth-year student at National Law Institute University, Bhopal] The Supreme Court vide its order dated November 16, 2020, stayed the operation and effect of the judgment of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (“NCLAT”) in the case of Kundan Care Products...
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