[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...
Doctrine of ‘Reverse’ Piercing and the Jurisprudence of Indian Courts
[Debarshi Chakraborty is a 3rd year B.A., LL.B. student at National Law University Odisha.] The doctrine of ‘reverse’ piercing, although relatively new, is a controversial area of corporate law. This doctrine could be problematic given the situations where a body corporate has multiple shareholders. Conversely, there have been times even in relation to companies with one shareholder where it has...
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...
Revisiting “Sham” as a Ground for Piercing the Corporate Veil
[Ashwin Murthy and Sathvik Chandrasekhar are 4th year students from NALSAR University of Law] The doctrine of piercing the corporate veil was clarified in India with the landmark case of Balwant Rai Saluja v Air India (2013), recognising that the veil should rarely be lifted. Balwant directly relied upon the UK case of Prest v Petrodel which similarly narrowed the scope of such piercing (read...
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...
Analysis of “Externalisation” under Indian Law
[Deepansh Guwalani is a 4th Year Student at ILS Law College, Pune] Introduction “Externalisation” is a strategy of incorporating holding companies in offshore jurisdictions to enjoy certain benefits which the home country does not offer. The strategy is employed by companies to move their corporate structures away from the Indian tax and regulatory regimes. How it is done The process of...
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...
Papers on Comparative Corporate Law and Governance in Asia
Hostile Takeover Regimes in Asia: A Comparative Approach, which I have co-authored with Wai Yee Wan. The abstract is as follows: “The market for corporate control (operating through hostile takeovers) acts as a key corporate governance mechanism to discipline corporate managers. However, the process and substance of regulating hostile takeovers differs remarkably among various jurisdictions...
Recent Comments