Our earlier Ergo COVID 19 - Conducting Board Meetings Virtually, provided an overview on how Indian companies can conduct board meetings through Audio Visual Means (AV Means) during this time, to ensure statutory compliance.
Three decades ago, India’s economic liberalisation led to a drastic change in its social and economic landscape, with the country consistently being one of the fastest growing economies in the world. The turn of the century saw telecom infrastructure in India grow exponentially, resulting in faster networks and increased accessibility to internet and data to the public.
The global outbreak of COVID-19 has led everyone, from promoters to investment bankers to transactional lawyers to fund managers, to change the way in which business is done. One of the biggest challenges for any live transaction or commercial negotiation will be signing of documents. While remote execution is being adopted in the Indian market, parties are cautious about this approach and prefer physical signing of the documents.
With the continuing spread of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19 or “coronavirus), various businesses across the globe are facing an increasing number of challenges and issues that need to be addressed and mitigated. Retail sector is no exception to this. This article attempts to summarise issues that are being faced by retail companies and the mitigating steps they should be taking to remain complaint in challenging times, to avoid business and reputational disruptions:
In recent years there have been legislative reforms in India aimed at further simplifying inbound and outbound mergers and acquisitions (M&As). This article aims to summarise key aspects of M&As, including an overview of the main laws governing M&As, pricing guidelines, sectoral restrictions on investments, reporting requirements, and the key hurdles that potential Chinese investors should be aware of if they plan M&As in India.
The rapid and unprecedented spread of the novel coronavirus (Coronavirus) which started in December last year and soon became every economy’s waking nightmare has dealt a severe blow to businesses worldwide and posed a serious challenge to asset managers across the globe. Funds and their managers are battling various obstacles including accelerating fund outflows, substantial share price falls and operational challenges to their client-facing work as both international and domestic travel becomes increasingly difficult.
In recent times, the presence of COVID-19 in the business ecosystem is testing contingency plans and business continuity across organizations. Therefore, like all business functions, teams within organisations pursuing acquisitions and divestments also have to reorganize themselves in an agile manner to respond to this challenge. The attached document provides some insights around what to expect would change in the deal-making environment in India.
A mandatory CSR regime would require investors to ensure that the CSR contributing company has in place adequate avenues for its CSR obligations
In a landmark judgement, the Supreme Court of India (SC) has quashed the circular issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on 6 April 2018 (Circular) that prohibited banks and financial institutions from dealing in, and providing services for facilitating dealing in, virtual currencies (Cryptocurrencies) such as Bitcoin. A three-judge bench of the SC held the Circular to be a disproportionate regulatory action, in a decision that suggests that Cryptocurrencies should be subject to considered regulation, and not blanket prohibition, under Indian law.
The President of India had promulgated the Banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Ordinance on 21 February 2019 (Ref: No. 7 of 2019) (Ordinance) which was replaced by the Banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Act 2019 on 31 July 2019 (Ref: Act No. 21 of 2019) (Act). In our Ergo dated 7 March 2019 (which can be accessed here) we had provided an overview of the Ordinance and its key highlights.
