Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Norms – Taking PSU inefficiency to the next level
In February of this year (2014), the Government notified the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) norms making it mandatory for companies to take a 2% cut in their net profits and use that money for the betterment of the society. I have maintained this from the very beginning that not only will this create more wastefulness, particularly for […]
What do Credit Rating Agencies do?
“Credit rating agency Moody’s has assigned a ‘Baa3’ rating to India, with a stable outlook”. You must have read/heard this news. Do these AAAs, Baa3s, Cas, CCCs make any sense to you? Just like a school report card, these grades serve as a marking system /score card designed to inform interested parties about the creditworthiness […]
What is Qualified Institutional Placement (QIP)?
When businesses want to expand, they need capital. The stock market serves as an important medium for raising capital by sharing ownership of business in return for capital. Once the company gets listed on the stock exchange there are numerous ways to raise additional capital: It could do a rights issue and offer more shares […]
How do you hire a lawyer in India without any reference?
Naturally, anyone in legal trouble would want to know the past record of a lawyer before making a decision to hire him. Unfortunately, if you want to hire a lawyer in India, you will have to rely on some uncommon old school ways to find one. The cumulative effect of the Advocates Act, the Rules […]
Getting Legal Opinion in India
It’s about being on the right side of the law when conducting business. I have come across lots of businesses, who unknowingly violated regulations, resulting in significant legal costs and in a few cases, plunged the business into a total mess. This cannot be you. If you are a young business, it is all the […]
Corruption in private sector to be criminalized
With a view to check corruption in the private sector, the Government of India has proposed to make bribery in private sector a criminal offence. To this end, the Government has proposed to amend the Indian Penal Code, 1860 to criminalize both giving as well as receipt of bribes in the private sector. For this […]
FCPA Compliance – Challenges for U.S. Companies doing business in India
The past few years have seen a spate of FCPA enforcement actions against US Corporations with imposition of unprecedented fines and penalties. In 2008, Siemens paid the highest penalty to date – $800 million[i]. U.S. enforcement agencies have also imposed significant penalties against other companies such as Baker Hughes Inc. ($44 million)[ii], ABB Ltd. ($10.5 […]
Raising Equity Capital in India
When a company starts its business, it issues shares in proportion to the initial capital brought in by the promoters (i.e. those who start the business as a company). As the business of the company grows, the promoters often require more capital to meet the company’s growth objectives like capacity expansion, new product development, increase […]
Hostile Takeover defenses in India – Business Judgment Rule
Hostile takeovers in India are not very common. The use of advanced takeover defenses is hardly ever required and directorial conduct in such situations never comes under any serious scrutiny. Sometime back, I wrote about the standard of conduct required of board of directors in India (click here to view the post). The post elaborates on that and […]
Ideal Capital Structure: Looking for the right debt-equity mix
To ascertain the financial health of a company, amongst other things, it is important to analyze the capital structure of the company to understand how much of borrowed money does the company operate with. One of the most important financial indicator and which gets every investors attention is the debt to equity ratio. The capital structure of a company […]