The year 2019 can be said to be a watershed year in relation to the employment law regime in India. The Indian government took various steps to simplify and streamline the dated employment legislations, veritably in a bid to rise up in the index of Ease of Doing Business in India. The courts in India too played their part in interpretation of the existing legal regime. Here, we not only look at some of the…

In the matter of Sun Pharmaceuticals Industries Limited, the Ahmedabad bench of the NCLT has ruled that Section 234 of the Companies Act, 2013 and the FEMA Cross Border Merger Regulations, 2018, do not permit cross-border demergers. Sun Pharma sought to demerge two of its investment undertakings in India into two overseas resulting companies, based in the Netherlands and the US. Being a listed entity, it obtained prior approval of SEBI through the relevant stock…

Introduction On December 24, 2019, Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) released a circular setting up a stewardship code for Asset Management Companies (“AMCs”), Mutual Funds (“MFs”) and all the categories of Alternative Investment Funds (“AIFs”) investing in listed Indian companies (“Stewardship Code” or “Code”). In keeping with global trends, SEBI has made it necessary for the power wielding cash-rich institutional investors, to act in accordance with the responsibilities that invariably accompany and behoove…

INTRODUCTION Private equity (PE) transactions in India conventionally comprised minority investments in Indian companies. However, maturing market conditions and an increasingly favourable regulatory landscape have been providing tailwinds to PE firms to undertake buyout transactions. Many PE firms investing in India have gained significant experience to deal with the governance and regulatory risks that Indian markets pose. This enables them to leverage their expertise from running businesses globally to managing businesses in India.…

Control deals are gaining popularity because of the ability of the incoming controlling shareholder to control the ‘when’ and ‘how’ of the functioning of the business that is housed in the company. Additionally, the stigma associated with promoter’s relinquishing control of their companies is on the wane in India. Despite the market conditions, 2019 saw a fair deal of control transactions in the country. For such category of deals, calendar year 2019 was comparable to…

The edifice of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (“IBC”) was conceptualised on ideas such as promoting ‘maximisation of value of assets’, ‘a transparent and predictable insolvency law’,  ‘avoiding destruction of value of the debtor’ and recognising the difference between ‘malfeasance and business failure’.[1] In the three years since the enactment of the IBC, many areas in the insolvency resolution process  have required judicial and legislative interventions to enable the process to achieve the…

This blog post is part of a multi-part series. Our previous posts 1, 2 covered the salient features of the National Medical Commission Act, 2019 (NMC Act) where we highlighted some issues arising out of the same. The NMC Act has some interesting aspects that relate to Community Health Providers (CHPs). We attempt to shed some light on this proposal. Community Health Providers The NMC Act, under Section 32(1) provides for granting of a…