Spring 2018 Issue
In my view a global dispute involves various parties, from a number of different countries, litigating or arbitrating issues that frequently span multiple jurisdictions. This could range from parallel proceedings going on in different jurisdictions or substantive proceedings in one jurisdiction with interim relief applications in other jurisdictions or, as is common in international arbitration, where the parties are from different jurisdictions and have chosen a neutral seat and neutral governing law.
The dispute resolution landscape in the UK is in the midst of significant change. Many consider the reforms to be the most far-reaching civil justice transformations since the 1870’s1 and this is not even taking into account what may happen with Brexit (which we will discuss below).
Indian arbitration has been viewed by USA businesses as unpredictable and slow. Few USA businesses have agreed to arbitration conducted in India by an Indian arbitration forum. The 2015 Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act aimed to address concerns of the international business community about arbitration in India. It expressly limits the duration of on-shore arbitration to twelve months, with a possible six-month extension. After the prescribed period, the panel’s mandate automatically expires unless the parties appeal to the courts for a further extension. While theoretically sound, these time limits are yet to be tested in practice. It will take time for USA businesses to come to view Indian arbitration as a fair or preferred choice.
Russia is both a European and an Asian country, but has often appeared to pay more attention to relations with Europe. That is changing, as shown by major energy deals between Russia and China; robust bilateral trade and political discussions with Japan, South Korea, India and Vietnam; and Russia’s hosting of regional conferences, including the Eastern Economic Forum in September 2017. Among other goals, Russia seeks to attract substantial foreign investments from its Asian and Indian partners. For both geographical and practical reasons, foreign investors may wish to focus on the Russian Far East, a historically neglected region which has the potential to become a significant player in Asian-Pacific trade. This is a vast area with a population of more than 7 million people that includes the ports of Vladivostok, Khabarovsk and Nakhodka and extensive natural resources.
In 2017, we witnessed high levels of hiring activity in general corporate and M&A space across levels. Other transactional areas such as banking, capital markets and structured finance were busier than the previous years, but hiring at the mid-level especially was limited to replacing leavers rather than growing that practice area. The litigation market remained steady and so did other practice areas like IPR, taxation and competition law.
Ireland has recently introduced purpose-specific domestic legislation that enables two or more Irish companies to merge into a single company. This form of domestic merger enables one or more companies to transfer by operation of law all its assets and liabilities to another Irish company, upon which the transferor company is dissolved without going into liquidation. It mirrors aspects of the EU cross-border merger regime, which has been available to EEA companies, including Irish companies, since 2008.
The Competition Appellate Tribunal (“COMPAT”) has been done away with and has been merged with the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (“NCLAT”).
A foreign judgment can be enforced in Hong Kong by one of two means – first, through the statutory registration scheme based on reciprocity under the Foreign Judgments (Reciprocal Enforcement) Ordinance (Cap 319) or, second, under common law.
If you were to look at the Indian finance landscape around the last five to seven years, you would find a very traditional bank-dominated market, where the Indian state banks and the public sector undertaking (PSU) banks were giving the majority of financing, including a lot of project financing.
The Gulf countries have always had strong trade relations with India and we see this bond strengthening over the coming years. With bilateral trade projected to reach US$ 100 billion by the year 2020 between India and the UAE alone, avenues for business and cross border investments between the Indian subcontinent and the Gulf look bigger and brighter than ever before.
Prior to the Code, India did not have a consolidated statute governing incidents of insolvency and bankruptcy of various entities. For example, the provisions relating to the insolvency of corporations were scattered amongst laws as diverse as the Companies Act, 1956 (Companies Act), the Recovery of Debts due to Banks and Financial Institutions Act, 1993 (RDDB Act), the Securitization and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act, 2002 (SARFAESI Act) and the much-reviled Sick Industrial Companies (Special Provisions) Act, 1985 (SICA). Similarly, there were two statutes, namely, the Provincial Insolvency Act, 1920 and the Presidency Towns Insolvency Act, 1909 governing instances of individual bankruptcy.
Germany’s attractiveness as a place to invest and as a trading partner is unbroken.
The economic, commercial and industrial scenario today is that which is dependent upon investment or what we may also categorize as fund raising. Investment, which is a driver for growth for a number of industries, may flow into an organization in a number of ways such as private equity funding, angel investments, seed money investments, etc. These investments may vary in nature and in amounts and are regulated as per the applicable laws and regulations.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have been making inroads into nearly all walks of life. Much of what’s visible in the mainstream has been restricted to headline-dominating stunts such as Google’s DeepMind systems beating humans at ultra-complex board games like Go or Chess or the IBM Watson system besting champions of the TV game show Jeopardy (way back in 2011). There have been rapid improvements in self-driving car technology by several companies. And on the consumer software side, facial and photo recognition, real-time text, voice and image translation and other useful tools from the major tech giants often seem like magic, or at least eerily, almost-humanly intelligent.
The 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Brazil and India, which began with installation of the Brazilian embassy in New Delhi in the following year of India independence, is celebrated in 2018. The similarities of both countries may be a good perspective to explain the critical value of such partnership to Brazil, which has grown stronger through so many different times and contexts.
Data privacy is a burning issue, from the Aadhaar ID database to a series of recent government and judicial reports laying the groundwork for a much-overdue reform of Indian privacy regulations, which will affect a plethora of businesses.
In this second issue of Legally India, co-published with the team at Global Legal Media, we take a closer look at the world of disputes. In what can be the most exciting (as well as the most nerve-wracking) part of the job, we examine disputes of all shapes, colours and sizes and provide Indian lawyers, foreign lawyers and multinational companies with a closer understanding of Indian dispute resolution in a global context.