[The following guest post is contributed by Vinod Kothari of Vinod Kothari & Co. It deals with the details of the proposals announced by the RBI. In an earlier post, Pratik Datta sets out the background to RBI’s proposals] The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has proposed a major recast of the norms for external commercial borrowings (ECBs). While India is still far from...
RBI’s Draft Framework on ECB: The Background
[This guest post is by Pratik Datta, who is a Consultant at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), New Delhi. He can be reached at [email protected].] Yesterday the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released the draft framework for External Commercial Borrowing (ECB) for public comments on or before October 11, 2015. For the benefit of those who may be interested in providing...
Notice Clause: “On or as soon as reasonably practicable”
Although it is customary to use various expressions in modern commercial agreements, very few such agreements have been the subject matter of interpretation before Indian courts. Hence, it is essential to draw inspiration from jurisprudence being developed elsewhere. One such development relates to a decision rendered by the English High Court in December 2014 in Goldman Sachs International v...
Repeal of the “Swaps Push Out” Rule— An Evaluation
[The following post is contributed by Mandar Kagade, who is a Policy Analyst at the Bharti Institute of Public Policy, Indian School of Business] The United States Congress recently passed the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015 that made headlines for reasons not at all related to appropriations; it was in the news rather for including provisions that repealed the so...
The Exportation of Indian Capital Markets
Reuters has a report indicating that the volume of trading in Indian derivatives in the Singapore market is almost as robust as that in the Indian market. This suggests that the Indian capital markets are being exported overseas. Investors are able to enjoy the investment benefits in Indian underlying assets or investments without actually investing in India. Usually, this phenomenon occurs for...
Willful Defaulters and Derivatives Transactions
The Supreme Court was recently confronted with a question as to whether a company that had entered into a derivatives transaction with a bank could be categorized as a “willful defaulter” under the Reserve Bank of India’s Master Circular on Willful Defaulters on account of non-performance of payment obligations. More specifically, the question was whether a bank could be treated as a “lender” in...
Australian Court on Rating Complex Financial Instruments
The Federal Court of Australia has delivered an important ruling that pertains to the liability of credit rating agencies. In Bathurst Regional Council v. Local Government Financial Services Pty Ltd, the court found that Standard & Poors (S&P) was liable to several local councils in Australia for a AAA rating provided in connection with their investment in complex financial instruments...
Black Money: Corporate Entities and Securities Markets
The Government yesterday tabled its White Paper on Black Money in Parliament. Billed as the first document to comprehensively tackle the issue, it cites various studies and is replete with data. However, it has already been subjected to criticism from various quarters owing to the lack of details and clarity in solutions to deal with the issue. This post, however, briefly touches upon the role of...
Enforceability of Put and Call Options in India
I have posted a working paper tentatively titled Investment Agreements in India: Is There an ‘Option’?, the abstract of which is as follows: Put and call options are ubiquitous in modern investment agreements, such as those involving joint ventures as well as private equity and venture capital investments. The enforceability of put and call options in Indian companies has been the...
Regulating Offshore Derivative Instruments
Over the last few years, SEBI has been adopting various strategies to regulate the use of offshore derivative instruments (ODIs) such as participatory notes that enable foreign investors to participate in the Indian markets without actually owning the underlying securities. The strategies include restricting the use of ODIs, and also requiring the application of know-your-client norms (KYC) by...
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