[Anish Gupta is a 3rd year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore] In the recent case of Harish Kumar v. National Financial Reporting Authority (NFRA), the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) has held that the NFRA has ‘superior authority’ to oversee auditors of listed and large companies on disciplinary matters over the Institute of...
Regulating the Regulator: A Prohibited Territory for the CCI
[Shourya Mitra is a penultimate year law student at Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat] On 2 June 2023, the Delhi High Court, in the case of Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (“ICAI”) v. CCI, held that the Competition Commission of India (“CCI”) lacks jurisdiction to assess grievances arising from a statutory regulator’s decisions. It held that the CCI could not compel or outsource...
Debarment of Company Auditor: A Cursory Death Note
[Shubham Nahata is a 3rd year student of Hidayatullah National Law University] Chapter X of the Companies Act, 2013 contains provisions for regulating audit and auditors of the companies. Among other things, the chapter deals with the appointment, removal, disqualifications, and resignation of company auditors. Recently, the Bombay High Court in N. Sampath Ganesh v. Union of India dealt with the...
MCA’s Proposals for Overhauling the Audit Industry
In corporate governance parlance, auditors are considered to be key “gatekeepers”. However, governance failures both in India and around the world have pointed fingers towards the role of auditors. This has led to a series of reforms that impose greater stringency on auditors and the audit process. For example, the audit provisions in the Companies Act, 2013 (the “Act”) have been designed...
SEBI’s Consultative Paper: A Step towards a Stricter Regime for Auditor Resignation
[Shreshtha Mathur is a fourth year law student at National Law University, Jodhpur] A statutory auditor is appointed by a company according to the statutory requirement, in order to inspect and form an opinion about the fair presentation of a company’s accounts. Section 139 of the Companies Act, 2013 mandates that every company must appoint an individual or a firm as an auditor at its first...
Concept of Retiring Auditors under the Companies Act, 2013
[Munmi Phukon is a Principal Manager at Vinod Kothari & Company, and can be reached at [email protected]] Five years since the implementation of the Companies Act, 2013 (CA 2013), a common agenda pertaining to appointment/ reappointment of statutory auditors is going to be placed before the shareholders in the ensuing annual general meetings of most of the companies. Since the scheme of...
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...
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...
Omnibus Approval of Related Party Transactions and Threshold for Fraud Reporting by Auditors
[The following guest post is contributed by Amitabh Robin Singh, who is an Associate at DSK Legal] With the notification bringing Sections 13 and 14 of the Companies (Amendment) Act, 2015 (“Amendment Act”) into force being published in the official gazette on December 15, 2015, we now have new provisions on the omnibus approval of related party transactions by companies. On a separate note, a...
Changes in the Fraud Reporting Mechanism Under the Companies (Amendment) Act, 2015
[The following guest post is contributed by Suprotik Das, a 4th year law student at the Jindal Global Law School, Sonepat, Haryana.] The Companies (Amendment) Act, 2015 is a harbinger of positive trends in the ease of doing business for Indian companies. This post is specifically with regard to Section 143 of the Companies Act, 2013 concerning the power and duties of auditors and its...
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