[Himanshu Mene is an L.L.M Candidate (Specialization in Corporate Law) at Maharashtra National Law University, Nagpur] Introduction In the interest of transparency, Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (“IBBI”) by way of a notification dated January 16, 2018 has issued a circular mandating that Insolvency Professionals (IPs) and all other professionals that are appointed by the IPs for the...
Condonation of Delay Scheme, 2018: A Relief to Defaulting Directors and Companies
[Tanaya Desai is a 4th-year student at ILS Law College, Pune] In a bid to constrict and prevent illicit fund flows and black money by shell companies, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (“MCA”) last year disqualified over 300,000 directors for default in filing company annual returns and financial statements with the Registrar of Companies (“RoC”), a statutory mandate prescribed by the Companies...
Vouchers under GST: Navigating a Grey Area
[Siddhant Bhasin is a third year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student at Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat] The use of vouchers has been on the rise, and a large number of transactions today are done through them. They are used in different contexts as – employee incentives, sales schemes and as discount offers. In most cases, there is an issuing party, the party that accepts the coupon for the said...
Abstention in a Committee of Creditors: Whether Counted for Voting
[Nitu Poddar is a Senior Associate at Vinod Kothari and Company, and can be reached at [email protected]] This post deals with the question whether, in determination of the assent at a Committee of Creditors (“CoC”) in corporate insolvency resolution proceedings, the votes of such creditors who (a) do not vote at all, at an electronic voting; or (b) abstain from voting at the meeting...
The Smart Contract Revolution
[Vrinda Vinayak is a 4th year B.A., LL.B (Hons.) student at the National Law University, Delhi] Background The concept of smart contracts was first envisaged by Nick Szabo in 1994. Such contracts consist of three essential elements. They are – (i) negotiated, coded and executed over the blockchain, in simple ‘yes-no’ or ‘if-then’ terms, (ii) authenticated by anonymous...
Legal Issues Surrounding Online Card Gaming
[Meenal Maheshwari Shah is the legal counsel for Brand Capital, the investment arm of the Times of India Group] A vast population in India likes to engage in card games, especially rummy and poker. It naturally follows that with the advent of internet, they are fixated on the websites which host such games for stakes. Legal Framework Gaming with stakes falls within the purview of gambling...
Limitation Act and Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code: Deductions from the Past and Present
[Priya Gupta is a 3rd year B.A.LLB (Hons.) student at Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar] Over the past few months, a considerable debate has emanated on whether the Limitation Act, 1963 is applicable to proceedings under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (“IBC”). Although the answer has always resulted in being negative, the reasoning has been varying. The question first arose...
IBBI Amendments on Liquidation Value and Price Discovery
[Shaleen Tiwari is an Associate at Jerome Merchant & Partners, Mumbai] In an amendment dated 31 December 2017, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (“IBBI”) amended the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (Insolvency Resolution Process for Corporate Persons) Regulations, 2016 (“CIRP Regulations”). The amendment came close on the heels of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy (Code)...
Operational Creditors v. Financial Creditors: Evolution of Differences
[Shubham Sancheti is a 4th year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad] The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 [“Code”] has had its maiden anniversary but problems regarding its interpretation have continued since its inception. The segregation of the “operational creditor” from the “financial creditor” is one of the areas which still needs jurisprudential and...
Amendments to the Regulatory Framework for REITs And InvITs: An Analysis
[Jubair Bhati and Anjali Choudhary are 5th year B.B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) students at School of Law, Raffles University, Neemrana (Rajasthan)] The regulatory framework for real estate investment trusts (“REITs”) and infrastructure investment trusts (“InvITs”) was first introduced by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) in 2014. However, these structures did not experience a great...
The Battle of Forms
[Narayan Gupta is a final year law student at Jindal Global Law School, Sonepat] Introduction This post seeks to envisage the problems that arise in the Battle of Forms and the solutions to tackle them. Before we get into the problems encapsulated in the Battle of Forms, it is necessary to understand what leads us to that concept. As the name suggests, it is a battle between ‘forms’, which refers...
Cryptocurrency Investment Vehicles in India: Possibilities and Challenges – Part 2
[Job Michael Mathew is a 4th year BA.LL.B (Hons) student at NALSAR University of Law. The first part is available here.] Commodity Mutual Funds and Exchange Traded Funds? In light of the above discussion, an investment vehicle like a mutual fund that invests in cryptocurrency and issues units of the fund in return for investing in the fund can be termed a commodity mutual fund since the...
Cryptocurrency Investment Vehicles in India: Possibilities and Challenges – Part 1
[Job Michael Mathew is a 4th year BA.LL.B (Hons) student at NALSAR University of Law] Introduction In October 2009, for every dollar one could purchase 1309 bitcoins. At the beginning of 2017, the price of one bitcoin was close to $1000. It attained $5000 in October and nearly doubled in November. In December it rose to $20000 in some exchanges. This post does not attempt to document the reasons...
Side-pocketing: A plausible liquidity management tool for the Indian mutual fund industry
[Param Pandya is a Research Fellow in the Corporate Law and Financial Regulation vertical at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. The author is thankful to Prof. Jayanth R Varma, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad for his valuable comments. Views are personal. This post was first published in the Oxford Business Law Blog] An illiquid asset may lead to reduced returns and increased redemptions in...
Fork in the Road – Nissan’s Arbitration Against India
[Utsav Prashar is a 2014 graduate of NALSAR University of Law] The legal maxim Ubi jus ibi remedium expresses that there is no wrong without a remedy.[1] In the landmark case of Ashby v. White,[2] the House of Lords observed: “When the law clothes a man with a right he must have means to vindicate and maintain it……and it is a vain thing to imagine a right without a remedy”.[3] The...
More on SEBI’s Order in the Price Waterhouse Case
In an earlier post, Jayant Thakur had discussed the order of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) passed against Price Waterhouse last week. In addition, readers may find the following two further pieces on the legalities of the SEBI order of relevance: In a column titled “SEBI’s ban onPwC:Learnings for an auditor” in Bar & Bench, Kanwardeep Singh examines SEBI’s...
Educoncours’ 1st International Essay Writing Competition on Corporate Law, 2018
[Announcement on behalf of Educoncours] About the Competition The competition aims at allowing law students to express their opinions with the world, which includes some suggestions, critical analysis of the present corporate world, their innovative ideas which might lead to some widespread contribution in this area of law. This is an opportunity for every law student to discover this wide ambit...
Freezing Injunctions in Commercial Disputes
[Niranjan Sankar Rao is a fourth year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student at Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat] In this post, I attempt to differentiate between the approaches taken by the Bombay and Delhi High Courts on freezing injunctions. This subject has not received much certainty in commercial disputes despite its popularity in intellectual property rights infringement cases. I attempt to...
SEBI’s order against Price Waterhouse firms/partners
SEBI passed an order on 10th January 2018 against CA firms practicing under the brand/banner of Price Waterhouse and two of its partners. The Order debars them from issuing, for two years, audit certificates of listed companies, compliance certificates under specific securities laws of listed companies & SEBI registered intermediaries, etc. It has also required the auditor firm, jointly with...
Scope of Moratorium under Section 14 of the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code, 2016 – An Analysis
[Maneck Mulla is the Proprietor of M Mulla Associates, Mumbai] The prohibition contained in section 14 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016, (“the Code”) against the initiation and continuation of legal proceedings has recently been a topic of discussion in rulings of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (“NCLAT”) and the High Court of Allahabad and has now become an open question of...
New Section 90 in Companies Amendment Act 2017 – aims at benami shareholders, shoots everyone else but them
‘Shell companies’ have been in the news recently. On how monies are laundered, laws are avoided/evaded, benami properties are held, etc. through such companies. Curious is that even shares of these companies may be held benami, making it difficult to catch true culprits. There are laws to deal with benami holdings including the most prominent Prohibition of Benami Property Transactions Act, 1988...
Implications of SEBI (Intermediaries) (Amendment) Regulations, 2017
[Rishabh Chawla is a 5th year B.A., LL.B.(Hons.) Student, National Law Institute University in Bhopal] Introduction On May 26, 2008, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) notified the SEBI (Intermediaries) Regulations, 2008 (Regulations). They provide for a comprehensive regulation over all intermediaries on various requirements such as registration, code of conduct, procedure for...
Highlights of the Insolvency Amendment Bill, 2017
[Aayush Mitruka is a lawyer based in Delhi] In an attempt to debar certain unscrupulous promoters from regaining control over a distressed company, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (Code) was amended by way of a presidential ordinance in November 2017 (Ordinance). The new provision introduced rendered certain persons ineligible to be a resolution applicant. Much has been written and...
Public Depositors as Creditors under the Bankruptcy Code: A Matter Left Unsettled
[Shashank Chaddha and Deeksha Malik are fourth and fifth year students, respectively, at National Law Institute University, Bhopal. They can be reached at [email protected] or at [email protected].] Over the past few months, the orders of the adjudicating authorities under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (“Code”) have provided much needed jurisprudence on the new insolvency...
NCLT Kolkata Rules on Non-Defaulting Promoters
[Saurav Roy is a 4th-year student and Lisa Mishra a 3rd-year student at ILS Law College, Pune] The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (Amendment) Ordinance, 2017 (“the Ordinance”) was enacted to, among other things, override the actions of unscrupulous promoters who seek to buy back company assets at a throw-away price, as compared to what is actually owed to the lenders. However, the Ordinance did...
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