The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) took on a different hue in India with the enactment of the Companies Act, 2013. Section 135 of the legislation introduced a requirement on large companies to spend two percent of their average profits over the preceding three years towards certain statutorily defined causes. Although often mistakenly considered to be mandatory, the statutory...
NCLAT’s Order in Essar Steel: Implications of Proposed Amendments to the IBC
[Jubin Jay is a 5th year BBA.LLB student at National Law University Odisha] The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on 4 July, 2019 passed an order in the Essar Steel insolvency case (Standard Chartered Bank v. Satish Kumar Gupta). Extending to more than a hundred pages, the appellate body heard appeals from various operational creditors, banks and the state after the committee of...
Call for Submissions: NLUJ Law Review
[Announcement on behalf of the NLUJ Law Review] About the Review The NLUJ Law Review is the flagship journal of National Law University, Jodhpur, established with the objective of promoting academic research and fostering debate on contemporary legal issues in India. It is a bi-annual, double-blind student reviewed and edited the journal, focusing on an inter-disciplinary approach towards legal...
CCI’s Evolution in Relation to the Smartphone Market
[Sumit Jain is at the Centre for Competition Law and Economics (CCLE)] Through its order dated 16 April 2019 in Umar Javed v. Google LLC, the Competition Commission of India initiated a probe against Google Inc. for its potential abuse of dominant position on the Android platform. The order remains curious from multiple standpoints. First, it was not made public until as late as 18 June 2019...
Will the RBI’s Revised Circular on Stressed Assets Sustain its Validity?
[Surya Rajkumar is a BA LLB student at Jindal Global Law School] The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had on 7 June 2019 issued its revised circular on the resolution of stressed assets following the decision of the Supreme Court of India in Dharini Sugars and Chemicals Limited v. Union of India, (2019) 5 SCC 480, in which it quashed the RBI’s previous circular dated 12 February 2018 as ultra vires...
Insolvency Proceedings for Conglomerate: Questions and Way Forward
[Piyush Rathi and Saksham Agrawal are 4th Year B.A. L.L.B students at NALSAR University of Law] A majority of large scale businesses today grow around a parent company that branches out into a group of companies, each of which performs a specific function. Such a structure in the form of a conglomerate provides for administrative convenience to the managers of the companies along with a range of...
Status of Arbitration Proceeding and Award during Moratorium
[Jannhvi Bhasin is a commercial & corporate advocate specializing in insolvency law at Kesar Dass B. & Associates and Akshay Sharma is a final year B.A.LLB (Hons.) student at National University of Study and Research in Law, Ranchi] The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC), which is a complete code in itself and provides for the initiation of a corporate insolvency resolution...
Shareholding Patterns and Director’s Duty of Loyalty: Comparative Analysis of India and the US
[Ishani Mookherjee is a 3rd year B.A. LLB (Hons.) student at Jindal Global Law School] The Delaware Supreme Court, in Cede v. Technicolor Inc., examined the applicability of the business judgment rule in the United States (US). For a business decision to be protected by this rule, two conditions have to be satisfied – the duty of loyalty and the duty of reasonable care. This creates a...
Competition Commission on Regulating Distribution of Pharmaceutical Products
[Anupriya Dhonchak is a IV year student at the National Law University, Delhi] The pharmaceutical sector merits close competition scrutiny because the practices by multiple market players in the sector play a crucial role in determining sustainable access to affordable medicines. The nexus among manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers gives rise to unique competition concerns due to the...
Highlights of Companies (Amendment) Bill, 2019
[Vinod Kothari is a corporate and insolvency practitioner at Vinod Kothari & Co and can be reached at [email protected]] The Companies (Amendment) Bill, 2019 has been placed before the Parliament on 25 July 2019. While the Bill, 2019 is largely to enact into parliamentary law the provisions already promulgated by way of Presidential Ordinance, the Bill also brings some interesting...
SEBI’s DVRs Framework: How Will the Indian Market React to a Super Voting Stock Structure?
[Sarthak Sharma and Aabha Dixit are 3rd year and 4th year students respectively at Hidayatullah National Law University, Raipur] The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on 27 June 2019, after much deliberation, approved the issuance of shares with differential voting rights (DVRs) and issued a framework governing issuance and listing of shares with DVRs. Prior to this, whilst issuance...
Payment of Stamp Duty Inconsequential to Enforceability of a Foreign Arbitral Award in India
[Anirban Chanda is a fourth-year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student and Anujay Shrivastava a final-year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student at Jindal Global Law School] While the Indian Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, even after the 2015 amendment, does not expressly lay down any legal requirement that mandates parties to an arbitration agreement to pay stamp duties on an arbitral award, there has been...
Competition Law Issues in the Indian Telecom Sector: Analysis of Recent Developments
[Varun Kannan is a 5th year law student at the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata] The telecom sector in India has witnessed intense competition over the past decade. The arrival of Reliance Jio and the Vodafone-Idea merger reinforce the steep competition that exists in this sector – which forces the market players to continuously enhance their performance and gain an edge over...
Open Banking Standard in the Indian Context
[Kishan Gupta is a B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) student at Dr. RML National Law University, Lucknow and Managing Editor of the RMLNLU Arbitration Law Blog] Understanding Open Banking Standard Until now, the names of large banks like SBI, ICICI and PNB were considered synonymous with custodian of customer’s financial data. Generally, these traditional banks store customer’s financial information for their...
NCLAT Decision in Essar Steel Insolvency Proceedings: A Radical Stance?
[Ashwin Mathew is with Mansukhlal Hiralal & Co, Mumbai] The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on 4 July 2019 laid down important principles on the corporate insolvency resolution process in Standard Chartered Bank v. Satish Kumar Gupta which related to the insolvency proceedings of Essar Steel India Limited, the corporate debtor, under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016...
Lessons from L&T’s Takeover of Mindtree: Can Differential Voting Rights Aid Promoters in Peril?
[Rongeet Poddar is a final year B.A. LLB (Hons.) student at West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences] A hostile takeover is a rare occurrence in the Indian market because of the stringent control of promoter-families over companies and concentrated shareholding patterns in India. L&T’s hostile takeoever of IT services firm Mindtree however is an exception to this general trend...
Statutory Licensing and Internet Broadcasting: A Legal Conundrum
[Ayushi Singh and Abhishek Jamalpur are 4th year students at National University of Advanced Legal Studies, Kochi] In May 2019 the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, in exercise of its powers conferred under section 78 of the Copyright Act, 1957, has proposed the Copyright Draft Amendment Rules, 2019 to amend some of the rules of the principal Copyright Rules, 2013. These Amendment Rules are...
Applicability of SARFAESI to Assignment of Loan by an NBFC
[Siddharth Tandon is a BB.A. LL.B student at National Law University, Jodhpur] The primary objective of enacting the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Securities Interest Act, 2002 (or the SARFAESI Act) was to empower the financial institutions by identifying and remedying the problem of non-performing assets (NPA) by providing efficient solutions such as...
Dutch Order on Jet Airways: UNCITRAL Model Law the Need of the Hour?
[Syamantak Sen and Vivek Badkur are third-year law students at the National Law Institute University, Bhopal] The State Bank of India, Gaggar Enterprises and Shaman Wheels, a few of the many creditors of the grounded Jet Airways, i.e., the corporate debtor, filed petitions before the Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) under section 7 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code...
Call for Papers: RMLNLU Law Review Volume X
[Announcement on behalf of RMLNLU Law Review] About the Journal The RMLNLU Law Review is an annual peer-reviewed Journal published by the Journal Committee of Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow which seeks to provide numerous insights and views into contemporary legal issues and encourage conversation about the same. The RMLNLU Law Review runs parallel to the RMLNLU Law...
Supreme Court on Unstamped Arbitration Agreement: A Further Analysis
[Rahul Kanoujia and Venkata Supreeth K are student at Gujarat National Law University] The case of Garware Wall Ropes Ltd. v. Coastal Marine Constructions & Engineering Co. Ltd, decided by the Supreme Court in April 2019, involved an application made by Coastal Marine under section 11 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, for the appointment of a sole arbitrator in response to certain...
Computing Price Adjustment in Construction Contracts: The Limited Scope for Setting Aside an Arbitral Award
[Zacarias Kanjirath Joseph is a dispute resolution lawyer based in Bombay. He may be contacted at [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece are personal] A division bench of the Supreme Court of India in its judgment dated 8 May 2019 in Ssangyong Engineering & Construction Co. Ltd. v. National Highways Authority of India set aside an award of an arbitral tribunal, which...
SAT Order: Stock Exchanges not to Follow SEBI’s Circulars and Directions Mechanically
[Anand Narayan is a corporate and securities lawyer currently working as an in-house counsel in Mumbai] One has lately witnessed a trend that the stock exchanges, such as NSE, BSE and NCDEX, are following the circulars and directions issued by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) mechanically without application of mind, which has not gone down well with the market participants. Much...
Can the High Court Extend the Mandate of Arbitrator under International Commercial Arbitration?
[Suprabh Garg is a III Year BA LLB (Hons.) student at the National Law University Odisha] Provisions for Extension of Mandate of Arbitrator(s) Section 29-A-(1) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 provides that an arbitration award must be made by the arbitral tribunal within a period of twelve months from the date upon which the arbitral tribunal ‘enters upon reference’, i.e. the date...
Call for Papers: Indian Journal of International Economic Law
[Announcement on behalf of the Indian Journal of International Economic Law (IJIEL)] About the Journal The IJIEL is a student-edited and peer-reviewed law journal published annually by National Law School of India University, Bangalore (NLSIU). The previous volume of the journal featured contributions by Prof. Raj Bhala (Rice Distinguished Professor, Associate Dean for International and...
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