The Madras High Court in Bhagavan Das Dhananjay Das v. Union of India (decided on 3 August 2018 and accessible via Judis) struck down the order of the Registrar of Companies, Chennai (“RoC) which had disqualified a number of directors from their position in various companies. The Court was considering a large group of writ petitions that various disqualified directors had filed before it. In...
NCLT Order Facilitates Cross-Breeding of Entities
[Pammy Jaiswal is a Partner at Vinod Kothari and Company] Background Earlier under the Companies Act, 1956 (the ‘Act, 1956’), sections 391 to 394 dealt with provisions relating to compromises, arrangements, amalgamation and reconstruction. The said provisions were re-cast under the Companies Act, 2013 (the ‘Act, 2013’) under sections 230 to 234. The statutory provisions under the Act, 2013 suffer...
Corporatisation Prospects for Unregistered Entities: Amendment to Section 366 of the Companies Act, 2013
[Pammy Jaiswal is a Partner at Vinod Kothari and Company] Background By virtue of the enforcement notification of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (‘MCA’) dated 5 July 2018, the proposed change under section 75 of the Companies (Amendment) Act, 2017 (‘Amendment Act’) relating to section 366 of the Companies Act, 2013 (‘Act, 2013’) has been notified with effect from 15 August 2018. Further, by...
Analysing the Change in Law Regarding Issuance of Sweat Equity Shares
[Vartika Tiwari is a 3rdYear student of National Law Institute University, Bhopal and is on the Editorial Board of NLIU Law Review] On 16 January 2016, the Government launched the “Startup India”campaign and ever since it has been making constant efforts to promote startups and make the country business friendly. There is no denying the fact that India has come a long way since then. In fact, it...
Testing the Validity of a Type of Shareholders’ Agreements in India
[Priya Garg is a 4th year student at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (WBNUJS)] In the Indian context, shareholders’ agreements (SHAs) have been widely categorized into two types – one, that impose restrictions on the transferability of shares held by the shareholders who happen to be the parties to the SHA (type 1 SHA) and the other, which deal with the matters relating...
Cross-Characterization of Share Capital
[Naren BS is an independent legal consultant and was previously a Senior Associate with a leading law firm] This post represents a brief discussion on the characteristics of equity and preference capital under the Companies Act, 2013 and the flexibility of cross-characterization between the two kinds of capital, i.e. imputing the characteristics of one kind of capital to the other. Background and...
Arbitrability of Oppression and Mismanagement – Rakesh Malhotra & After
[Deepanshi Ahlawat is a 5th year B.A., L.L.B. (Hons.) student at National Law School of India University in Bangalore. Earlier posts on the topic are available here, here and here] Introduction Oppression and mismanagement (“O&M”) disputes in India are governed by sections 241 & 242 of the Companies Act, 2013 (“2013 Act”) [analogous to sections 397, 398 & 402 of the Companies Act...
Decoding the Electoral Bearer Bond Scheme 2018
[Sharanya Shivaraman is a student (Class of 2019) at ILS Law College, Pune] In his budget speech 2017-2018 in February last year, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley addressed the issue of transparency in political contributions. His announcement regarding the introduction of electoral bonds generated significant debate and speculation. The Electoral Bond Scheme, 2018 was subsequently launched on...
Qualified Institutional Placements: SEBI Settles the Dust
[Shubham Sancheti is a 4th Year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad] The Securities and Exchange Board of India [“SEBI”] omitted clause (c) under Regulation 82 of the SEBI (Issue of Capital and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2009 [“Regulations”] by way of a recent amendment [“Amendment”]. The provision falls in Chapter VIII of the Regulations which deals with...
Transferability of Winding-up Proceedings from High Court to NCLT
[Dheeresh Kumar Dwivedi is a lawyer at APJ SLG Law Offices New Delhi] The Companies Act, 2013 (“Act of 2013”) was passed with the object of consolidating and amending the law of corporations in India. Before the passage of the Act, the winding-up of a corporate debtor on the ground of ‘inability to pay debts’ was governed by the provisions of sections 433(e) and 434 of Companies Act, 1956 (“Act...
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