[The following post is contributed by Vinod Kothari of Vinod Kothari & Co. The author may be contacted at [email protected]] Voluntary winding up under the Companies Act, 1956 has been segregated into two different types, i.e. members’ voluntary winding up and creditors’ voluntary winding up. But the Companies Act, 2013 eliminated distinction between members’ voluntary winding up and...
Filling in the Gaps in the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code – Cross Border Insolvency
[The following post is contributed by Aparna Ravi, who is a Bangalore-based lawyer and was a member of the Bankruptcy Law Reforms Committee. The views expressed here are personal.] One issue that is conspicuous by its absence in the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC), that recently got past both houses of Parliament and is now awaiting presidential assent, is cross border insolvency...
Supreme Court Resolves Conflict Between SARFAESI Act and Companies Act
In Pegasus Asset Reconstruction P. Ltd. v. Haryana Concast Ltd., the Supreme Court was concerned with a conflict between the Securitization and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act, 2002 (for brevity ‘the SARFAESI Act’) on the one hand and the Companies Act, 1956 on the other. The specific conflict was identified as follows: Whether a Company Court, directly...
Bankruptcy Code on Non-Corporate Insolvency and Bankruptcy
[The following guest post is contributed by Vinod Kothari & Niddhi Parmar of Vinod Kothari & Co] The Bankruptcy Laws Reforms Committee (“BLRC”) presented its final report (“Final Report”) to the Government of India on November 4, 2015. This Final Report is divided into 2 parts, i.e. Volume I and Volume II comprising the text of the findings and recommendations and the draft Insolvency and...
Ushering in a New Corporate Bankruptcy Regime for India
[The following guest post is contributed by Vinod Kothari of Vinod Kothari & Co.] The Bankruptcy Laws Reforms Committee (“BLRC”) headed by Dr. T. K. Viswanathan recently submitted its final report (“Final Report”) to the Ministry of Finance. Before this, an interim report (“Interim Report”) was submitted earlier in February 2015. While the Interim Report merely recommended some amendments to...
Proposed Bankruptcy Code Unveiled
The much-awaited reform of bankruptcy law in India has witnessed a momentous step with the finalization of the report of the Bankruptcy Law Reforms Committee, which was issued yesterday. The report contains two parts: the Rationale and Design and a draft of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Bill, 2015. Of course, it is impossible to discuss the details of the reforms proposed within the confines of a...
Committee to Review the Companies Act
Although the Companies Act, 2013 is brand new and yet to be brought into force in its entirety, there is already a lot of discussion about the need to reevaluate the legislation. The Government has taken initial steps to address some of the issues by way of the Companies (Amendment) Act, 2015. However, as we have previously noted, the amendments are not very significant and are mostly procedural...
Budget 2015: Ease of Doing Business
The Government’s focus on enhancing the ease of doing business in India is abundantly evident from the Budget. This involves not only issues of licensing and approvals, but also matters for legal reform. In this post, I argue that while the proposals in the Budget will certainly help grow industry and foreign investment, many of these measures appear to correlate precisely with the need to...
Report on Bankruptcy Law Reforms
The state of bankruptcy law in India continues to leave much to be desired, and adds to the difficulties in doing business in the country. Several previous efforts have been undertaken towards reforms, but they have either been introduced on a piecemeal basis or have not entirely been successful. With this in mind, the Government had last year appointed the Bankruptcy Law Reform Committee (BLRC)...
Winding-up Petitions and Arbitration Clauses
The relationship between the statutory remedies provided by the Companies Act and the Arbitration Act has proven to be controversial in recent times. The difficulty arises usually because the basis on which the statutory remedy is invoked (eg oppression, winding-up) is often an underlying commercial dispute which is the subject matter of an arbitration clause. The courts have given different...
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