[Anupam Choudhary is an Associate at Agram Legal Consultants, a law firm based in Mumbai. The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the view of his firm nor do they constitute legal opinion] Recently, there has considerable debate over whether promoters of insolvent companies can submit bids in the bidding process for their own companies. Recently, the Essar...
SARFAESI Amendment: The “Qualified Buyers” Confusion Remains
[Akhileshwari Anand Raj is a 3rd year B.Com LL.B (Hons.) student at Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar] The amendments last year to the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act, 2002 (SARFAESI Act) were long overdue. They sought to ensure that the various banking and recovery laws were in consonance with each other, and they also...
One Year On: The Effect of Demonetization on the Companies Act, 2013
[Shikha Rawal is an Associate at Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co.] “Demonetization” is a topic that has evoked considerable interest and strong opinions across the board since it was announced a year ago, i.e. on November 8, 2016. The goal of demonetization was to eliminate the unaccounted cash transactions, and thereby strengthen the economy. Differences of opinion abound on whether...
Reviewing Arbitrability at the Interim Relief Stage
[Agnish Aditya is a 4th Year B.B.A LL.B student at NLU Odisha] In a judgment rendered last month, the Madras High Court considered the impact of non-arbitrability on granting an interim relief. In Lifestyle Equities Cv v. QDSeatoman Designs Pvt. Ltd (“Lifestyle”), the Court was called upon to decide the arbitrability of certain disputes pertaining to intellectual property rights in an application...
Scope of Exemptions from Open Offer in case of Foreign Merger Transactions
[Supreme Waskar & Sumit Agrawal are lawyers from Suvan Law Advisors. Views are personal.] The Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) in its recent informal guidance dated October 30, 2017 in the matter of Linde India Limited (“LIL”) has held that ‘review of merger process’ by ‘competent authorities’ will not exempt the proposed merger from the obligation to make an open offer under...
The ITAT Ruling in the NDTV Case: Some Final Thoughts
[Post by Shreya Rao. The earlier posts in this series can be found here and here] A quick recap This is the third in a three-part series of posts about the ruling of the Delhi ITAT in the NDTV case. As readers may recall, part 1 commented on how the NDTV tax case paints a poor picture of all actors: The facts as described by the tribunal portray NDTV in a poor light (note that NDTV disputes...
Categorization of Pledge Under SEBI’s Insider Trading Regulations, 1992: Arguments against the Tide
[Parth Dixit is a 4th Year, BA/LLB (Hons.) student at Symbiosis Law School, Pune.] By way of its order dated August 11, 2017 in the case of SRSR Holdings Private Limited v. Securities and Exchange Board of India, the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) has provided a degree of finality to an important question raised in the aftermath of the infamous Satyam scam of 2009-2010. The question was...
Deconstructing the Delhi High Court’s Anti-Arbitration Injunction against Vodafone UK’s BIT Arbitration
[Ritvik M. Kulkarni is Associate, Wadia Ghandy & Co., Mumbai. Views are strictly personal] The Delhi High Court (the Court) in its order dated 22nd August 2017 has passed an ex-parte interim injunction restraining Vodafone UK entities (Defendants) from initiating investment arbitration against the Union of India (UOI) under the India-UK Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) (the Order). Amidst...
The ITAT Ruling in the NDTV Case: Piercing the Corporate Veil in Tax Matters
[Post by Shreya Rao. An earlier post in this series can be found here.] There is a coyness surrounding the term “lifting of the corporate veil”. It conveys a fragility of form and suggests that the legal personality of a company isn’t as robust as we assume it to be. Common law is most dismissive of such suggestions; over the 120 years since the ruling of the House of Lords in Salomon v. Salomon...
The (Negligible) Role of Shareholders in Corporate Insolvency
The Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) yesterday issued a clarification stating that no resolution or approval of the shareholders of a debtor company will be required in order to give effect to a resolution plan under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC). It appears that stakeholders sought the MCA clarification on account of section 30(2)(e) of the IBC, which requires the resolution...
Real Estate Regulatory Act and PPP Projects
[Deepak K. Thakur is a projects partner at a law firm and is based in Mumbai] The Real Estate (Regulation and Development Act 2016) (“RERA Act”) that took effect from May 1, 2017 seeks to provide a solution to many of the practical issues faced by the concerned stakeholders in the real estate industry. The RERA Act also contains consumer oriented provisions to protect their interests, with...
SEBI: Rules on Profit Sharing Arrangements Apply to Unlisted Subsidiaries
The rules introduced earlier this year by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) that impose restrictions on profit sharing arrangements in respect of listed companies have already provoked interpretational controversies. In an earlier informal guidance (relating to Accelya Kale Solutions Limited), SEBI clarified profit sharing arrangements that involved employees being provided...
SEBI Circular on Minimum Public Shareholding
[Sarthak Karol is an associate at a law firm in Mumbai] By way of a Circular dated October 10, 2017, (“Circular”), the Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) issued directions to stock exchanges to come down heavily on listed entities, their promoters and directors who are in breach of the 25% minimum public shareholding (“MPS”) norms mandated under regulation 38 of the SEBI (Listing...
Call for submissions for the 10th volume of the Indian Journal of International Economic Law
[Announcement on behalf of the Indian Journal of International Economic Law] The Board of Editors of the Indian Journal of International Economic Law (IJIEL) is pleased to invite original and unpublished manuscripts for publication in Volume 10. About the Journal The IJIEL is a student-edited and peer-reviewed law journal published annually by National Law School of India University, Bangalore...
FDI in the Aviation Sector
Jae Woon Lee and I have a working paper titled “Skies Half Open: Foreign Investment in India’s Airline Industry”, the abstract of which is as follows: The foreign investment regime governing the airline industry has been the subject matter of considerable debate. Our goal in this paper is to supplement the literature by embarking on an analysis of the foreign investment regime in India and...
The Curious Case of Homebuyers under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016
[Manaswi Agarwal is an advocate based in Mumbai and Aayush Mitruka is an advocate based in New Delhi] One of the crucial issues which has emerged and is widely talked about under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (Code) relates to the interest of homebuyers under the Code. The jurisprudence developing around the Code does not adequately address their concerns, and therefore the law...
The Risky Truth about Investments by Banks: The RBI’s Amendment To Financial Services Directions
[Utsav Gandhi is a corporate lawyer based in Bangalore] Introduction The Reserve Bank of India (“RBI”) last month amended the Master Direction – Reserve Bank of India (Financial Services provided by Banks) Directions, 2016 (“Directions”). This allows banks to invest in a multitude of entities such as Real Estate Investment Trusts (“REITs”), Infrastructure Investment Trusts (“InvITs”)...
The Supreme Court’s Liberal Interpretation of the SEBI Regulations on Fraudulent Trade Practices
[Jitesh Maheshwari is an Associate at Mindspright Legal in Mumbai] Introduction The Supreme Court last month passed a landmark judgment in SEBI v. Shri Kanaiyalal Baldevbhai Patel in which front running by a non-intermediary has been bought within the prohibition of the SEBI (Prohibition of Fraudulent and Unfair Trade Practices Relating to Securities Market) Regulations, 2003 (the “PFUTP...
On the Law of Constructive Trusts in India
[Niranjan Sankar Rao is a fourth year B.A. LL.B. (Hons) student at Jindal Global Law School, Sonepat, Haryana, India. The author is grateful to Mr Aditya Swarup, Professor, Jindal Global Law School and Mr Mihir Naniwadekar, Advocate, Bombay High Court, for their guidance.] This post explores what constitutes an equitable or constructive trust in English law and attempts to analyse it in light of...
Regulation of Equity Based Crowdfunding in India
[Priyanka Sunjay is a Fourth year student, B.A., LL.B.(Hons), National Law University, Jodhpur] Crowdfunding is a means by which an entrepreneur or business raises financing by way of small contributions from a large number of individuals using mass communication through the Internet. It is usually used to raise funds for films, art, business ventures or social causes. There are various types of...
Why the RBI and IBBI Need to Work Together to Effectively Handle the Resolution of Stressed Assets
[Anirudh Gotety is a 4th year student pursuing B. B. A., LL. B. (Business Law Honours) at National Law University, Jodhpur. He can be contacted at [email protected]] The introduction of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (“IBC”) has led to a paradigm shift in the debt recovery mechanism in India. The IBC was a much-needed legislation given the plethora of central and state laws...
RBI Directions on Peer to Peer Lending
[Guest post by Samrudhi Chothani, an Associate at Bharucha and Partners, Mumbai and Saurav Roy, a IV B.A.LL.B student at the ILS Law College, Pune. Views are personal] Introduction The Peer to Peer (“P2P”) Lending sector is one with tremendous potential and requires robust regulation. P2P lending is similar to crowd-funding, where persons who want loans are connected with interested lenders. The...
Application Under SARFAESI: Supreme Court’s Liberal Approach
[Guest post by Richa Saraf, Assistant Legal Advisor at Vinod Kothari & Co.] In the case of M.D. Frozen Foods Exports Pvt. Ltd. v. Hero Fincorp Ltd.,[1] the Supreme Court held that there was no illegality in a non-banking finance company (“NBFC”) invoking the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act, 2002 (“SARFAESI Act”) for recovery of...
Report of the SEBI-Appointed Committee on Corporate Governance
In June this year, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) appointed a committee under the chairmanship of Mr. Uday Kotak to review corporate governance norms in India, and to make recommendations to enhance governance standards. The committee comprised members from diverse fields. It issued its report on 5 October 2017. The report contains several significant recommendations. SEBI has...
Process for Issuing a Demand Notice under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code
[Guest post by Satish Rai, who is an advocate based in New Delhi.] Introduction While the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (the ‘Code’) gains momentum with evolving jurisprudence and continual changing of contours of provisions of the Code, a two-fold procedural requirement prescribed for the initiation of insolvency resolution process by an operational creditor requires greater scrutiny. The...
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