As a lawyer it&rsquo;s not uncommon to be confronted with unwarranted accusations of creating complexities out of simple situations &mdash; some Mr Know-it-All will corner you at a dinner and hold forth on how lawyers and accountants make a big &ldquo;deal&rdquo; of M&amp;A activities, that they tend to sideline all other considerations except what they receive. Even though such barbs deserve to be ignored, it sent me thinking on the lawyer&rsquo;s role in M&amp;A.

Lawyer role in mergers and acquisitions

Business Standard

Last week, I had pointed out some inconsistencies between the Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) provisions relating to the Export Promotion Capital Goods (EPCG) scheme and the related Customs notifications that give effect to the FTP provisions. This week, I bring in focus some confusion that the trade will have to contend with due to defective Customs notifications relating to the duty exemption scheme.

No reason to bar duty rebate on final products

Now it is official. It is judicially confirmed. The Supreme Court has said it in so many words that the Cenvat Rules are not properly drafted. Not one but two judgements came in quick succession which said the same thing. One is the case of Maruti Suzuki Ltd vs. CCE Delhi[1] and the other is the case of CCE vs. Gujarat Narmada Fertiliser Co[2]... In the second case the Supreme Court has been forthright in saying that problems of interpretation are arising because &ldquo;the Rules have not been properly drafted.

Cenvat rules not properly drafted, says SC

The Supreme Court has held that an arbitration clause in a contract would survive although the agreement has come to an end on account of its termination. In this case, Magna Leasing &amp; Finance Ltd vs Potluri Madhavilata, the latter was granted a loan for buying a luxury car. Since the instalments were not paid, the contract was revoked and the company invoked the arbitration clause. The hirer resisted stating that since the contract has been scrapped, the arbitration clause would not survive. The Andhra Pradesh high court accepted this argument. But when the company appealed to the Supreme Court, it reversed the high court ruling and asserted that the arbitration clause would survive even if the contract was revoked.

Arbitration clause can outlive agreement

Just like performance cycles, time triads are the basis for numeric ranking.

The numeric ranking

With just three meetings, the Group of 20 countries that accounts for 85 per cent of world GDP and two-thirds of the global population has emerged as the main forum for discussing international economic issues. Born out of the crisis of the Great Recession, the G-20 is less than a year old but has managed to dispel the initial scepticism about what it might achieve, and notched up some important successes, including some at last week&rsquo;s Pittsburgh summit. Since every crisis is an opportunity that should not be wasted, it is entirely to the good that the Great Recession has been used to push aside the increasingly inadequate G-8, and to replace it with the G-20. A look at the results of the latest meeting will make this clear.

The G-20 arrives

The greater the economic mess, the more the incentive to take money abroad &mdash; that, in turn, deepens the crisis.

A V Rajwade: Full convertibility - II

The scorching pace of growth in sales of two-wheelers and new capacity additions in cement should put to rest all arguments of India&rsquo;s coupling with the US or the rest of the world in general.

Mahesh Vyas: India drives along the recovery autobahn

The Kargil review committee went into the failure to share intelligence, seen as one of the causes of the Kashmir war, and recommended corrective action. The government then decided to set up a Multi-Agency Centre (Mac) to coordinate and share intelligence available with the different agencies, including the Intelligence Bureau, the Research and Analysis Wing and Military Intelligence. It was also decided that a National Intelligence Grid (Nig) would be set up at a subsequent stage. Nothing happened for many years, until the Mumbai attack of last year, which was seen as having resulted from yet another failure of intelligence coordination. A new home minister took charge, and soon there was action.

Needed: a privacy law

The Swiss banks&rsquo; proposal to levy a withholding tax on the income generated from assets of Indian nationals and held in Swiss banks, is not worth treating seriously. The idea is that Swiss banks will levy the tax without disclosing the names of people paying the tax, and hand over the tax to the Indian government. The offer by Urs P Roth, CEO of the Swiss Bankers Association, has been made against the backdrop of talks with Switzerland on a new tax treaty, and is therefore an attempt by Swiss banks to avoid giving details of Indians holding their wealth in Swiss banks (pace the UBS capitulation before US tax authorities). Among the problems with the proposal, the concept of a tax on interest income is nebulous since Swiss banks are not known for paying generous interest rates on deposits. Also, since the proposed tax would imply the fulfilment of a tax obligation, the legal implications need to be examined. If the implication is an amnesty, the offer loses all meaning.

Swiss challenge

At a recent Engelsberg seminar organised by the Ax:son Johnson foundation in Sweden, I gave a paper on &ldquo;The view of America from India&rdquo;, revisiting a theme I had written about in the late 1980s, in a paper entitled &ldquo;Manners, Morals and Materialism: some Indian perceptions of America and Great Britain&rdquo; for a seminar organised by Nathan and Lochi Glazer at Harvard (reprinted in my Against Dirigisme). I had then argued that the mutual perceptions of Indians and Americans were unflattering, if not openly hostile. I had ascribed this to the attitudes (in part) of the British-educated Indian elite, who echoed many of the British critiques of American manners, morals and materialism.

Deepak Lal: Macaulay&#39;s children redux

The first time I heard about what &lsquo;Better Place&rsquo; wanted to do for sustainable transportation, I was impressed. To reduce the world&rsquo;s dependence on crude oil &mdash; a commodity with a finite supply and volatile price &mdash; this young company proposed to replace the liquid fuel transportation network with an all-electric network. The idea was so simple at the time that it was surprising no one had thought of it before.

Vandana Gombar: Yanking out the old transport model

For the Indian government, the Pittsburgh Summit has many lessons. The meeting of leaders of the Group of 20 (G-20) countries ended last week with India realising that it would now have a bigger role to play in the global arena. It would have a say in the manner in which policy prescriptions are to be framed by G-20, now that it has become the premier body for global economic issues.

A K Bhattacharya: Too few good men

We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end,&rdquo; is what the G20 leaders conveyed to their trade negotiators at the Pittsburgh summit last Friday. Like the previous two summits in Washington and London respectively, the latest event under the leadership of President Barak Obama failed to provide any clear direction on how to end the comatose Doha Development Agenda trade negotiations.

D Ravi Kanth: Doha drifts again

A lawsuit should be a continuous, seamless process from the stage of filing to getting relief.

M J Antony: Tyranny of procedure

They are in comparison to their US counterparts, but there can be little doubt the performance parameters for them are a lot less stringent as well.

'Are the professors at the IITs/IIMs underpaid?'

The government&rsquo;s proposal to bring a Bill during the winter session of Parliament to protect the interests of home buyers is to be greatly welcomed. Most home buyers invest the largest share of their life savings in a home, and till now have suffered from asymmetry of information vis-&agrave;-vis the builder or seller. As a result, the typical home buyer has had little scope for ensuring that he gets what he has contracted for, and compensation for non-delivery. On the other hand, it is necessary to ensure that regulation is not excessive, and leaves builders with the freedom to do their business without being harassed by officialdom.

Protecting home buyers

What happens when the apex patents organisation brings an economist, sorry, a chief economist, on board? You get a report that links the impact of the economic crisis to patent filings and seeks to explain a complex pattern through a fixed prism. You also get a report with a snappier title even if its conclusions are not entirely convincing.

Latha Jishnu: Recession and the global patent effect

The proposal to lease six sick state-owned fertiliser units, as an alternative to an outright sale, is a potentially workable idea. Though the 90-year lease that is planned makes it a virtual sale, and should therefore be shortened to no more than 20 or 30 years, a lease will be more acceptable politically. The substantive advantage is that a lease, as opposed to an outright sale, opens up the project to smaller companies as well, and this would include companies/entrepreneurs who are confident of their ability to turn around these sick companies but do not have the money to offer upfront. India&rsquo;s telecom revolution, for instance, almost died still-born when the bidding process involved stiff annual fees but blossomed once the government moved to a more sensible revenue-share licence fee structure &mdash; this allowed a little-known firm like Bharti to take off and become the country&rsquo;s top telecom service provider.

The lease option

Wanted: An Asian Managing Director and new approaches to capital flows.

Arvind Subramanian: The IMF beyond Istanbul

The other day, I spent ten minutes with my eyes closed in the neighbourhood park, trying to experience the world of the blind. With few non-visual markers (other than the bush I almost stepped into) to enable me to navigate, the going was tough. Just when I was beginning to appreciate my other senses, I tripped heavily against a bench. The words of Nidhi Kaila, an IIM Calcutta alumna who runs Esha &mdash; an organisation for the blind &mdash; came back to me.

Geetanjali Krishna: A sight for sore eyes

Business Standard brings you expert opinions on various issues

Page 863 - Opinion Specials