[Kunal Kumar is 4th Year B.A., LL.B. student at National Law University, Jodhpur] Introduction In light of the judgment delivered by the Supreme Court in BALCO, Part I of the Indian Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (the “Act”) has no applicability to foreign-seated arbitration (except in case of agreements concluded prior to the judgment), and the parties shall be referred to arbitration...
Legality of Cryptocurrency in India
[Sannat Chandna is a 5th year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student at Amity Law School, Delhi] The year 2017 witnessed a tremendous growth in the stature and worth of cryptocurrencies. Such an increase has never earlier been witnessed in relation to trading in any currency or commodity of such a volatile nature. India’s finance minister, while presenting the budget 2018, expressly stated that the...
Briefing on Stakeholder Responsibility of Corporate Boards
The NSE Centre for Excellence in Corporate Governance (CECG) has issued its most recent quarterly briefing titled Stakeholder Responsibility of Corporate Boards, which has been authored by Mihir Naniwadekar and myself. The executive summary is as follows: – The interests of stakeholders (besides shareholders) have become quite prominent to necessitate their recognition by corporate boards;...
SEBI’s Order against PwC: A Questionable Approach towards Mens Rea
[Sanchit Varma is a 4th year BA.LL.B (Hons) student at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad] The nearly decade-old Satyam controversy has left a lasting impact on the Indian corporate sphere, raising dormant issues of corporate governance and the need for stricter regulatory control over listed entities. The fallout from the scam especially affected Satyam’s auditors, who were hauled up in equal...
Finance Bill 2018: Amendment to Securities Laws
[Sumit Agrawal is a regulatory lawyer and ex-SEBI official. Views are his own. Twitter: @sumit12agrawal] During his Budget Speech 2018, the Finance Minister spoke about amending the Securities and Exchange Board of India Act 1992 (“SEBI Act”), the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act 1956 (“SCRA”), and the Depositories Act 1996, to streamline adjudication procedures and to provide for penalties...
The “May” and “Shall” Conundrum under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code
[Aayush Mitruka is a lawyer based in Delhi] The enactment of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (Code) was one of the most significant legal reforms in India in the recent past, aimed at solving the burgeoning problem of non-performing assets and bringing the insolvency law in tune with global standards. The Code incorporated recommendations made by various committees and went through a...
Incorporation of Arbitration Clause by Reference
[Anshuman Chowdhury is a 5th year BBA, LL.B.(Hons.) Student of National Law University Odisha] In a recent judgment in Inox Wind Ltd v Thermocables Ltd (“Inox Wind”) judgement, the Supreme Court held that “a general reference to a standard form of contract of one party will be enough for incorporation of arbitration clause”. This was apparently an expansion of the scope of reference for...
Press Note 1 of 2018: Revision of the FDI Regime
[Amitabh Robin Singh is a corporate lawyer practising in Mumbai] The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion has issued Press Note 1 of 2018 dated January 23, 2018 (“PN 1”), which liberalizes the foreign direct investment (“FDI”) regime across various sectors. However, I would like to open this post by not discussing a particular sector, but with the language that concludes PN 1. There has...
A Curious Case of ‘Public Interest’ in Indian Corporate Law
[Abhijeet Singh Rawaley is a Bar Council of India Trust Scholar and a III Year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) Candidate at NALSAR, Hyderabad With inputs from Shreenath A. Khemka, a King’s Law Scholar pursuing an LLM at the University of Cambridge] This post comments on section 396 of the [Indian] Companies Act, 1956 (carried forward as section 237 in the Companies Act, 2013). The comment critiques the...
Harmonization of Insider Trading Norms and the Companies Act
[Ankit Handa and Arunima Vijay are 3rd year (VI Semester) B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) students at National Law University in Jodhpur] The Companies Amendment Act 2017 (“CAA ‘17”) has been notified by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (“MCA”) on 3 January 2018. One of the major aims of harmonisation with the Securities and Exchange Board of India Act 1992 (“SEBI Act”) and regulations made thereunder is...
NCLAT on Public Interest in an Amalgamation Scheme
[Jai Bajpai is a 3rd year student at School of Legal Studies, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun] Introduction The element of public interest in amalgamation schemes has remained a fairly unexplored territory in the Indian corporate law regime. In essence, an amalgamation scheme ought to be beneficial to each and every class of shareholders and creditors and also in public...
Interpretation of Essential Goods and Services under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016
[Archis Choudhary is a 4th year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student at Hidayatullah National Law University in Raipur] Section 14(2) of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016 (Code) restricts the termination of supply of essential goods or services to the corporate debtor during moratorium period. In the case of Innoventive Industries Limited v. ICICI Bank Limited (2017), the Supreme Court observed that...
Companies (Amendment) Act, 2017: Loans to Directors
[Utsav Mitra is a 3rd year, B.A. LLB Hons student at The National Law Institute University, Bhopal] The granting of loans to, and security and guarantees provided on behalf of, directors and other interested parties of the directors is governed by section 185 of the Companies Act, 2013. However, this is a widely criticised section, being too prohibitive in nature as compared to the corresponding...
Disclosures by Professionals under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code
[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...
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