Tag: International Developments

  • UK: Consultation Paper on Takeover Bids

    While the SEBI Takeover Regulations in India are a subject-matter of detailed review, elsewhere in the U.K. there are proposals for amending certain aspects of the City Code on Takeovers and Mergers. These changes have been necessitated on account of the widespread debate that followed the takeover of Cadbury plc by Kraft Foods Inc. early

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  • Encapsulating the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) Regime of 2009

    (The following post is contributed by Rohan Bagai, who is a corporate lawyer at one of the leading law firms in India. He holds a Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree from New York University School of Law (NYU), New York with a specialization in corporate laws) The American Society of International Law (ASIL) recently posted

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  • Substance over Form in Taxation: The Recent English Approach

    We have at several times on this blog discussed issues around the legality of tax avoidance. In debates around avoidance/evasion distinction, reference is often made to the classic English cases – Duke of Westminster, Ramsay, Furniss, Macniven and others. In this background, it might be useful to consider the latest approach of the English Courts to

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  • SEC’s Restrictions on Short Selling in Melting Scrip

    (The following post has been contributed by Ravichandra S. Hegde of J. Sagar Associates) The Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) in February 2010 has amended Rule 201 of the SHO Regulations[1] framed under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (“Act”) restricting abusive short sale in the falling scrip thereby retaining investor confidence. The amendment effected

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  • Lehman Bankruptcy Examiner’s Report

    The Report of the Examiner in the Chapter 11 proceedings of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. provides details about certain transactions that were carried out in the company and the manner in which they were accounted for in its books. The key transaction is question is referred to as “Repo 105”, and the New York Times

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  • Political Contributions by Companies

    Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court pronounced an important judgment in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission on the issue of political spending by corporations in elections. The New York Times has a summary: Overruling two important precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the

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  • U.S. Financial Reforms: The “Volcker Rule”

    Last week, the U.S. unveiled a series of reforms to deal with some of the lessons learnt from the financial crisis. Following is an extract of the President’s remarks that outline the proposals: First, we should no longer allow banks to stray too far from their central mission of serving their customers. In recent years,

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  • Recent proposals for a Tobin Tax

    Recently, the UK government proposed the levying of a ‘Tobin tax’ or a financial transactions tax to recover the cost of bailouts in recession situations. The proposal has not won many supporters; indeed, India is one of the countries which has opposed the tax. Despite initial rejections of the idea, the IMF is said to

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  • ‘Principal place of business’ – Oral Arguments in Hertz v. Friend

    An earlier post had discussed the issue in Hertz v. Friend, which calls upon the United States Supreme Court to determine what is the ‘principal place of business’ of a corporation having operations in more than one State. The Court heard the matter on 10th November, and the transcript is available here. Unfortunately, while it

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  • Law Firms and Joint Ventures

    A few months ago, we had posted about a paper by Professor Jayanth Krishnan on issues that revolve around the opening up of the Indian legal sector to foreign law firms. He has now released the results of another interesting piece of research titled The Joint Law Venture: A Pilot Study that examines the rate

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