[Kanakprabha Jethani is with Vinod Kothari Consultants Private Limited] The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued a notification on 16 May 2019 requiring non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) having an asset-size exceeding the prescribed threshold to appoint a Chief Risk Officer (CRO) with clear roles and responsibilities to oversee their risk management practices. The CRO shall be required to...
Delhi High Court Restrains Short Seller’s Report
Short selling involves the selling of a security that an investor or a trader does not have in possession when placing the sale order in the system. A short seller borrows the security and then sells it in the market with an expectation that it can buy back the same security at a later date for a lower price than it was sold for. The difference in the selling price and the buying price would be...
LLM Program in Financial Regulation
[Announcement from the Kirit P. Mehta School of Law] The Indian financial regulatory landscape has seen rapid change in the last decade. From the merger of two financial sector regulators to the evolution of an entirely new ‘fintech’ space, the enactment of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 which affects firms in the business of lending, the growing sophistication of rules on insider...
Bombay High Court on the Fate of Digital Music Streaming and Downloading Applications
[Tanya Varshney is a 4th year B.A. LLB. (Hons) student at Jindal Global Law School] The Bombay High Court pronounces another judgement changing the fate of online music streaming and downloading services. In Tips Industries Ltd. v. Wynk Music Ltd., Justice Kathawalla provides an interpretation of the provisions of the Copyright Act in the context of digital streaming and downloading of music...
SAT on Selective Disclosure of Information and Model Code of Conduct
The insider trading regime creates two types of offences in respect of insider trading, i.e., the “trading offence” whereby a person buys or sells securities while in possession of unpublished price sensitive information (UPSI) relating to such company and the “communication offence” which involves an inappropriate disclosure of UPSI on a selective basis. A vast number cases relating to insider...
Income Tax Act: Appeals from the Dispute Resolution Panel
[Nishant Pande is a 4th year BA LLB (Hons.) student at NALSAR University of Law] The Dispute Resolution Panel (‘DRP’) is one of several bodies established in under the Income Tax Act, 1961 (the ‘IT Act’) to allow settlement of disputes with the help of an alternative dispute resolution (‘ADR’) mechanism. Section 253(2A) of the Act empowered the Revenue to prefer an appeal before the Income Tax...
Side letter vs Fiduciary Duty: Conflict in Private Equity Firms
[Kaustub N. S. Bhati is a 4th year student at NALSAR University of Law] A private equity (PE) firm generally consists of two types of partners, limited partners (LPs) and general partners (GPs). As the name suggests, LPs are outside investors (like companies, endowments, foundations, and the like) whose liability is commensurate with the extent of their investment, while the GPs are professional...
Concerns on Going Concern: Proposed Amendments to Liquidation Regulations Need a Relook
[Vinod Kothari is an insolvency practitioner at Vinod Kothari & Co and can be reached at [email protected]] The possibility of going concern sales in liquidations, visualised by adjudicating authorities in several early cases, received regulatory recognition by way of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) (Liquidation Process) (Second Amendment) Regulations, 2018...
Electoral Bond Scheme, 2018: A Company Law Perspective
[Abhinav Sankaranarayanan and Saurav Rajurkar are IV year students at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata] Background The Electoral Bond Scheme, 2018 made headlines recently after the Supreme Court of India finally began hearing the matter and passed an interim order requiring political parties to submit the details of funds procured through electoral bonds to the...
The Frustrated Resolution Applicant
[Aayush Mitruka is a lawyer based in Delhi and can be reached at [email protected]] The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 has replaced the erstwhile debtor friendly model where the defaulting debtors could secure moratoriums, retain control and yet write off loans with the ‘debtor-in-possession’ model. The new creditor driven process has instilled fear amongst delinquent borrowers...
Announcement: The NLSIU IPR-Technology Law Essay Competition
[Announcement on behalf of the Law and Technology Society, National Law School of India University, Bangalore] The Law and Technology Society and the Centre for Intellectual Property Research and Advocacy (CIPRA), National Law School of India University, Bangalore are pleased to announce the ‘The NLSIU IPR-Technology Law Essay Competition’. This is open to all undergraduate students...
Objective Justification in Abuse of Dominance Cases in India
[Basu Chandola is a BBA LLB graduate (batch of 2018) from the National Law University Odisha. The concept of objective justification provides that a dominant enterprise will not be abusing its dominant position if it can provide a justification for its conduct. Though the concept is well-accepted in the European Union, its position in Indian competition law is ambiguous. This post seeks to...
Schemes of Arrangement in Liquidation: A New Ray of Hope?
[Vinod Kothari is an insolvency practitioner at Vinod Kothari & Co and can be reached at [email protected]. An earlier post on the topic is available here.] The recent rulings of appellate judicial and quasi-judicial authorities in India permitting the pursuit of schemes of arrangement even after initiation of liquidation proceedings may have sounded surprising to many. However...
Supreme Court on Arbitration Agreement in an Unstamped Instrument
[Mansi Patel is a Partner, SRA Consulere, Advocates] In Garware Wall Ropes v Coastal Marine Constructions & Engineering Ltd (10 April 2019), the Supreme Court held that an arbitration agreement in an unstamped instrument does not exist in law; thus it cannot be acted upon by courts for the appointment of an arbitrator under section 11 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996. By this...
The Resurgence of Schemes of Arrangement in Insolvency and Liquidation
Schemes of arrangement have historically been available under Indian company law as a means to carry out corporate debt restructuring. However, as I have found in this paper, schemes were hardly used for this purpose in India. The enactment of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC) and the implementation of the corporate insolvency resolution process (CIRP) therein were expected to...
Preclusive effect of Res Judicata in International Commercial Arbitration: A Baffling Syndrome
[Prabhakar Yadav is a III Year student pursuing B.A.LL.B. (Hons.) at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore] The doctrine of res judicata is a potent tool for any legal order which aims to achieve efficiency and consistency in the judicial administration. This objective is achieved by the fact that res judicata buries disputes to rest by creating a preclusive effect of prior...
Supreme Court on the Relationship between Insolvency and Winding-up Proceedings
[Akhil Kumar is a Fourth Year BA LLB (Hons.) student and Ayushi Singh a Third Year BA LLB (Hons.) student at NUALS, Kochi] The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 has amended several provisions of the Companies Act, 2013 through the eleventh schedule of the Code. This has, on a few occasions, led to several uncertainties regarding the application of the amended provisions to various company...
Treatment of Employment Benefits under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016
[Medha Rao is an Advocate based in Bengaluru] Following the reasoning of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), Mumbai in Asset Reconstruction Company (India) Limited v. Precision Fasteners Ltd. [‘Precision’], the NCLT, Delhi in Alchemist Asset Reconstruction Co. Ltd. v. Moser Baer India Limited [‘Alchemist’] has also held that the dues owed to workmen from provident fund, gratuity fund, and...
Supreme Court on RBI’s Circular Relating to Insolvency: A Critical Analysis
[Rishabh Sant Tiwari is a 5th year B.A. LL.B. (Business Law Honours) student at National Law University, Jodhpur, India] The 12 February 2018 circular of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was assailed as ultra vires the powers given to it under the Banking Regulation Act, 1949 and the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934 in Dharani Sugars and Chemicals Ltd. v. Union of India. The Challenge Curious Case...
Voluntary Retention Route for Foreign Portfolio Investors
[Bhawana Keshwani is a student at Law College Dehradun, Faculty of Uttaranchal University] In March 2019, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) along with Government of India and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) introduced a new window called “Voluntary Retention Route” to encourage Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPI) to lock their investments in India for a considerable period. This...
Ordinance to Ban Unregulated Deposit Schemes: Bridging the Regulatory Gap
[Anirban Roy Choudhury is a banking and finance lawyer and an LL.M. (Finance) candidate at the Institute for Law and Finance, Goethe University Frankfurt] In spite of various legislation, including the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, 1978 and the Chit Funds Act, 1982, being in place throughout the last few decades, various entities regularly lured the unwary public with...
Consumer Protection and Payment Wallets – A Case for Tech-based Intervention
[Debanshu Mukherjee heads the Corporate Law and Financial Regulation vertical at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, a New Delhi based independent think-tank. Shehnaz Ahmed is a Senior Resident Fellow at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. Param Pandya is a Research Fellow at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. An expanded version of this post has appeared in the Oxford Business Law Blog]...
Demystifying the Nature of Loan Defaults: Reasoning of the Supreme Court
[Jai Shanker Bajpai and Aastha Bidsar are students at School of Law, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun] The difference between breach of contract and cheating under section 415 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (“IPC”) is a fine one. It is due to this fine line that errors are sometimes committed in interpreting the demarcated difference. Earlier this year, in Satishchandra...
Call for Papers: ‘Revamping Competition Law in India’
[Announcement on behalf of the Centre for Competition Law and Policy, NUALS Kochi] The Centre for Competition Law and Policy (CCLP) is a Research Centre, being part of the National University of Advanced Legal Studies, Kochi (NUALS Kochi). The primary vision of the Centre is to encourage study and research in competition law and policy. It also focuses on disseminating ideas and promoting...
Summer School on the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016
[The following is an announcement on behalf of Umang Foundation] About Summer School on the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 Umang Foundation Summer School, New Delhi 2019 is the first edition of the Summer School organized by Umang Foundation in association with NILS India. The Summer School will be organized at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi from June 29 to July 4. Our Knowledge...
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