100 Chinese automobile firms attend ‘Make in India’ seminars in China

BEIJING: Investment opportunities in India’s booming automobile and auto-components sectors have attracted around 100 Chinese firms to attend ‘Make in India’ seminars held in two key auto manufacturing hubs in China.     

The seminars were the part of a series of industry and sector specific ‘Make in India’ events to be organised across China this year, the Indian Embassy here said in a statement.     

“These seminars received an overwhelming response with nearly 180 representatives from around a hundred Chinese auto companies in Chongqing and Changchun attending the events,” the statement said.   

During the seminars, Counsellor (Economic) Prashant Lokhande noted the important role played by the auto sector in India and highlighted the potential for collaboration between Indian and Chinese companies in the sector, the statement said,     

Vinnie Mehta, Director General of the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India (ACMA), gave a detailed presentation on the strengths of India in the automotive sector and the areas for future growth, it said.     

Santosh Pai, Partner, Link Legal India Law Services gave a presentation introducing the legal and regulatory framework in India with a special focus on the Goods and Services Tax.     

During the seminars, Chinese companies queried about the taxation structure in India and the incentives offered to Chinese investors in the country, the statement said

Go to Source

A flawed perception drives a budget cut at UNC’s law school

Despite a strong economy, the state legislature passed a budget last month cutting funding for the University of North Carolina School of Law by $500,000. And after closing the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity two years ago, the UNC Board of Governors is currently considering a measure that would effectively eliminate the Civil Rights Center – a law-school center that brings suit on behalf of minorities against the state and local governments for civil rights violations – by prohibiting it from litigating.

It is hard not to see these actions as state officials expressing antipathy toward the law school. One reason often given for this animus is the belief that the School of Law employs only liberal faculty who hold views contrary to those held by the Republican legislature and Board of Governors. This perception is unsurprising given that much of the public exposure of the School of Law has been through the work of the Civil Rights Center and the newspaper columns written by my colleagues that criticize state Republicans and their policies.

But the perception is inaccurate. The School of Law is a place of rich intellectual and ideological diversity. The faculty members research in a wide variety of areas ranging from corporate transactions to jurisprudence, and they employ a wide range of methodologies including history, philosophy and economics. Some members of the faculty are liberal. But others are more conservative. I am a member of the Federalist Society, clerked for two federal judges appointed by Republican presidents and worked in the Department of Justice under George W. Bush. I tend to agree with Justice Thomas more than with Justice Sotomayor. I am not the most conservative member of the faculty. And my colleagues who do not self-identify as politically conservative have worked tirelessly to support causes that are conservative — such as the work of my colleague Mary-Rose Papandrea, a First Amendment expert whose work supports the rights of conservative students’ speech.

The School of Law has not played favorites among any of us. It has supported my columns criticizing the suits under the Emoluments Clause against President Trump as much as it has supported other faculty members’ scholarship challenging his immigration ban.

This intellectual and ideological diversity among the faculty is a desirable characteristic. The discussion among faculty with different values and approaches improves our research and scholarship. For example, Gene Nichol and I may not share the same political views, but my respect for him is unlimited. I always ask for his opinions on my work and take his comments very seriously.

The intellectual and ideological diversity is not limited to the faculty. Scholars with a wide variety of views regularly come to the School of Law to give lectures. Last year’s Murphy Lecture, one of the signature events at the School of Law, was delivered by Judge Reena Raggi, a George W. Bush appointee, who criticized the trend of suppressing conservative speech at universities.

The student body is also broadly diverse. That diversity can be seen not only in the student organizations, which range from the student chapter of the ACLU to the student chapter of the Federalist Society, but also in the jobs our students go on to fill. Some of our students clerk for liberal judges; others clerk for conservative ones. Some join plaintiffs firms; others work for private firms that represent big business. Some become prosecutors while others become public defenders.

This diversity among students is critical to their learning law. It gives students an opportunity to refine their own views by grappling with arguments that conflict with their assumptions, and it teaches students how to fashion arguments with which they disagree – an invaluable skill for an attorney.

The cut in funding hurts the ability of the law school to maintain this intellectual atmosphere. It is not simply that the cut takes away resources that help run the School of Law. It is also that the cut inevitably will pressure the School of Law to make decisions with an eye toward pleasing state officials instead of improving the law school. And it will make us all hesitate before expressing or even teaching positions that conflict with the views of the government. Elections can change the political makeup of the state legislature. But they should not affect the tradition of excellence in our flagship law school.

Andy Hessick is a law professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Go to Source

EU says regulators should stop ‘letter-box’ financial firms

LONDON (Reuters) – Regulators should prevent investment firms from setting up shop in one jurisdiction to avoid stricter controls in their home state, the European Union’s markets watchdog said, as centers such as Dublin, Frankfurt and Paris vie for business.

EU authorities are concerned about a “race to the bottom” as financial services firms shift operations after Britain leaves the bloc in 2019, amid reports businesses are being set up that are effectively no more than postal addresses to take advantage of more lenient rules in some countries.

Ireland has complained to the European Commission that it is being undercut by rival centers, Reuters reported in March.

National securities regulators should “mitigate the risk of letter-box entities and ensure that any relocation is effective”, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) said in an ‘opinion’, or formal guidance, on Thursday.

Regulators should ensure senior management are based in the home jurisdiction of the firm and that “board members and senior managers in the EU27 have effective decision-making powers, even where the investment firm is part of a group”, ESMA said.

If regulators believe that investment firms, such as broker-dealers including the trading arms of banks, are not genuinely operating in their home jurisdiction, “this may provide grounds for not granting or withdrawing authorization”, ESMA said.

ESMA also said regulators should not design “fast-track” authorization processes.

Financial professionals have said the speed with which they can set up in various jurisdictions has contributed to their decision-making on EU operations after Brexit.

“I think that the fast-track prohibition is targeted at the French – the AMF have offered UK-based fund managers a quick authorization process if they move from London to Paris,” said Neil Robson, a partner at law firm Katten Muchin Rosenman.

France’s AMF regulator has launched the “2WeekTicket” (TWT), a fast-track pre-approval process for firms already authorized by Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority.

“ESMA is saying that a quick authorization to leave the UK cannot be acceptable and that there are formal mandated authorization processes that have to be followed,” Robson said.

The AMF said the TWT was “not a license or an authorization” but a first-review service aimed at identifying whether there was any major obstacle to doing business in France.

“It does not substitute the normal complete authorization process for asset managers willing to establish in France, whether they were previously located in the UK or not,” a spokeswoman said. “To our knowledge, there is no specific concern from ESMA regarding the TWT.”

Lawyers also said the guidance risked a lessening of national regulators’ powers.

“Is there some form of disintegration of the (regulators’) ability to make rules in relation to their own jurisdiction, and govern their own authorization process?” said Monica Gogna, funds lawyer at Ropes & Gray.

Secondary Trading

In a separate opinion on secondary trading, ESMA said decision-making for designing, controlling and monitoring trading systems’ operations should not be outsourced outside the EU.

The broker-dealer trading arms of banks in Britain have previously asked EU regulators whether their entities in the other 27 EU states will still be allowed to outsource operations to London once Britain leaves the bloc.

“ESMA considers it necessary that conditions for outsourcing activities to UK-based entities do not generate regulatory and supervisory arbitrage risks,” the watchdog said.

In a third opinion, ESMA said regulators should also prevent asset managers from setting up letter-box operations, bringing them into line with rules applying to hedge funds.

“It is a big development because the ‘letter-box’ concept is only a … hedge fund idea,” said Leonard Ng, co-head of the EU financial services regulatory group at law firm Sidley Austin, adding legislation for other asset managers “has not previously been as prescriptive”.

ESMA said regulators should keep a close eye on investment managers who set up operations with fewer than three full-time staff.

“Granting authorizations to relocating entities should not result in a situation in which these entities could continue to perform substantially more portfolio management and/or risk management functions for the relevant funds in their original member state,” it said.

Chris Cummings, chief executive of Britain’s Investment Association, said he supported ESMA’s setting of “robust standards” for UK investment management firms doing business with the EU after Brexit.

Additional reporting by Simon Jessop; Editing by Keith Weir and Mark Potter

Go to Source

City Council Just Closed a Loophole in Portland’s New Renter Protection Law—But Questions Remain

Screen_Shot_2017-07-12_at_1.06.15_PM.png

With seemingly endless sunny days on the horizon, and the bottomless vacation time Portland elected officials are afforded, July can be a tough time to wrangle a full City Council dais.

Even catching four of Portland’s five city commissioners in the same room in coming weeks could prove tricky. So the decision was made earlier this week to bump up, from Thursday to Wednesday, a list of proposed tweaks to the city’s controversial but legal law mandating relocation payments for some renters.

With four commissioners planning to attend the Wednesday morning hearing (Commissioner Nick Fish is out), and four unanimous “aye” votes enough to pass the changes as an emergency, the ordinance could go into effect right away.

And now it has.

In the first set of “technical” fixes to the renter relocation law since it was passed in February, the council gave renters more time after receiving relocation payments of between $2,900 and $4,500 to either keep the money and move out or return it and stay put. The changes also give tenants longer to request a payment after receiving notice they’ll face a qualifying rent hike (45 days rather than two weeks), and gave landlords longer time to pay it (31 days rather than two weeks).

And as we noted in this week’s Mercury (on newsstands now-ish!), the council attempted to close a fairly huge loophole in the law.

Under the renter relocation ordinance, landlords must pay tenants if they raise rents by at least 10 percent (causing the tenant to move) or issue a no-cause eviction. But in passing the law, council created a carve-out for “mom-and-pop” landlords who own and rent just one unit or home.

The problem: Landlord groups quickly figured out that by creating limited liability companies (LLCs) for individual properties, owners could evade the requirement. The LLC would in effect be the owner, glossing over the fact that people behind the LLC owned a bunch of properties.

That will no longer fly—at least in theory. Language council passed today seemed to close the loophole by making clear the “form” of a person’s ownership in several properties didn’t matter, and people controlling multiple rental LLCs still must pay. But some tenant advocates said it wasn’t enough.

Margot Black, with the group Portland Tenants United, argued that the “mom-and-pop” exemption embedded in the law should be narrowed to “only those humans who personally manage their properties.”

When owners form LLCs or tap professional property management firms, Black suggested, they move beyond homespun mom-and-pop types and get into the realm of serious businesspeople who should be forced to pay. She also said the existing law could put the burden on tenants to prove their LLC-owned property didn’t have an owner in common with other rentals.

Portland attorney Alan Kessler agreed.

“It seems City Council is taking the position of people who own two houses, and weighing that against the position of people who have no houses,” he said during testimony.

Council didn’t bite. Though Commissioner Chloe Eudaly said she was open to the amendment, it wasn’t part of the package [PDF] of changes the council was considering. That package came from a “technical advisory committee” of housing officials, tenant advocates, property managers, and others who’ve been hashing out changes to the law.

“I think it is an important issue,” said Mayor Ted Wheeler. “I would like to see it discussed in the committee.”

The council did accept one amendment to the committee’s work, though. Under the new changes, a tenant has six months after a rent increase takes effect to either give notice they’ll move out or repay relocation money and eat the higher rents. Katrina Holland, executive director of the Community Alliance of Tenants, argued that renters might not be aware that six-month window existed, and so could be caught off guard if they were forced to pay the money back. The city council adopted language that should require landlords to give notice.

As to larger changes to the relocation law, they’re almost certainly coming. Council members have begun discussing short-term and long-term versions of the law. The short-term version is the one tweaked today, and it’s slated to expire in early October.

The longer-term version will be whatever council replaces the current policy with. After a judge’s ruling last week that the policy is legit, there appears to be little question that will happen.

“It is difficult to be here roughly six months from where we started and realizing that we’re going to have to go on our own,” said Wheeler, citing the state legislature’s inability to pass statewide renter protections in the legislative session that ended last week. “It means we have a lot of work ahead of us, and we’re up to the job.”

Go to Source

US law firm drops contract to lobby for Egypt’s spy service

An American PR firm has dropped Egypt’s spy service as one of its clients after just six months.

Weber Shandwick first signed the $1.2m deal with the General Intelligence Service (GIS) – Egypt’s mukhabarat – in January, with the intention of improving the country’s image following an authoritarian crackdown which has seen mass arrests and accusations of human rights abuses.

According to the US Justice Department, the firm would be promoting Egypt’s “strategic partnership with the United States,” and emphasising the country’s “leading role in managing regional risks.”

Another aspect of Weber’s work was to lobby the US State Department to label the Muslim Brotherhood a “terrorist” organisation, falling in line with the Egyptian government, which has been involved in suppressing the group after overthrowing the Brotherhood-backed democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

However, on Tuesday the company told PRWeek that after reviewing its accounts on behalf of foreign governments, it had “decided to discontinue work with the government of Egypt”.

The decision for the company to drop the contract came shortly after the publication of a scathing article in the Atlantic magazine, which criticised the deal with Egypt and warned that Weber Shandwick’s efforts “could undermine, rather than bolster, Egypt’s standing in Washington.”

“In Weber Shandwick, it would appear that the Sisi regime has found a PR firm willing to apply its considerable messaging prowess to the cause of funneling US taxpayer money and goodwill towards the increasingly brutal leadership of the world’s largest Arab country,” wrote Avi Ascher-Shapiro.

Read more ►

Egypt rounds up Uyghur Muslims at behest of China

In a statement, Cassidy & Associates – a subsidiary of Weber Shandwick who were also hired in January – said it would continue to lobby on behalf of the Egyptian government.

“Egypt is a long-standing ally of the United States and plays a key role in the fight against terrorism,” the firm said in a statement.

“Cassidy & Associates looks forward to continuing to represent the government of Egypt and highlight this important relationship with policymakers on Capitol Hill and in the administration.”

It is not uncommon for lobbying firms in Washington to be hired by foreign countries to help them secure political links in Congress or in the administration. It is rare, however, that an intelligence agency takes lobbyists and communication experts on their payroll to start its own lobbying effort.

The Egyptian mukhabarat are often accused by human rights organisations of torturing civilians and the forced disappearance of thousands of political opponents in the country. Amnesty has said the death of Giulio Regeni, the Italian researcher found dead in Cairo last year, echoes such disappearances. 

Weber Shandwick has represented Microsoft and has contracts for promoting the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Cassidy & Associates has represented various healthcare firms and universities, as well as the US aviation and defence companies Boeing and General Dynamics.

The government for Guinea Bissau, which has for years been dogged with claims of corruption, dropped Cassidy as its representative in 2010, stating a poor return on their investment.

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was the first foreign leader to congratulate US President Donald Trump on election night in November, and the American president has called his Egyptian counterpart “a great, great guy”.

The general feeling is that Trump’s administration will close more than an eye on human rights abuses committed by its autocratic allies and Sisi should not fear for the $1.3bn in military aid Egypt receives from the US. 

Moreover, the Egyptian government already spends another $2m a year for the services of another lobbying firm, Glover Park Group.

Go to Source

Extremists driven off Facebook and Twitter targeting smaller firms

Event on using technology to fight terrorism told small networks facing an influx and lack resources to block accounts

Man typing at laptop computer



Extremists have been forced to find other online forums in which to congregate.
Photograph: Rafe Swan/Getty Images/Cultura RF

Extremists driven off Facebook and Twitter targeting smaller firms

Event on using technology to fight terrorism told small networks facing an influx and lack resources to block accounts

Smaller social networks are struggling to deal with an influx of extremist users forced off the platforms of the “big four” technology firms, an audience of policymakers and campaigners has been told.

Thanks to the success of companies such as Facebook and Twitter in using technology to spot and block accounts supporting terrorism increasingly quickly, extremists have been forced to find other online forums in which to congregate. Unlike the larger social networks, many lack the resources to respond to police reports, let alone proactively monitor signups for extremists.

Speaking at an event on using technology to fight terrorism at Chatham House in London, Mariusz Żurawek, the founder and sole employee of text- and image-sharing site Justpaste.it, detailed his struggles. “We are a single-person company, operated from Poland but 60% of our users are speaking Arabic, we operate in 24 languages around the world, and receive 5-10m visits every month,” he said.

“I wasn’t planning that I would be sitting here today because the fact that terrorists started to use the site was a big surprise for me. The service wasn’t designed for such purposes.”

Even receiving police reports was problematic, he said: “When I started to receive complaints from others around the world in languages I wasn’t familiar with, like Hindi and Arabic, it was a big problem. I didn’t know what laws applied … and I didn’t know how to process such a big amount of material by myself.”

In common with larger social networks, Żurawek expressed doubts about whether he could be sure law enforcement agencies were doing the right thing. “I didn’t know who I could trust because you can’t always trust the word ‘police’ around the world,” he said.

The Guardian highlighted Justpaste.it as an Islamic State “propaganda tool” in 2014, when it was widely used as a way of sharing images on other social networks without needing to host them on those sites directly. At the time, Żurawek said: “I do not want to interfere with any type of conflict and stay on one side. JustPaste.it is just a text-sharing platform. It’s more a politics thing to discuss than a business one. I don’t have enough information about Isis to tell the public if they are good or evil. JustPaste.it has many users. I cannot focus on a single group.”

Three years on, the challenges faced by his site have been counterintuitively worsened by the success of the likes of Facebook and Twitter at fighting extremism on their own platforms.

Nick Pickles, Twitter’s UK and Ireland head of policy, said the company had suspended 650,000 users – “a number far higher than many academics thought existed”. The company automatically detects “upwards of 75% of those accounts through technological means,” he added, signalling a shiftfrom relying on user and law enforcement reports.

A significant boost to technological means of identifying extremist accounts came from an “image-hashing” database developed jointly by Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Google. The companies process images known to be terrorist propaganda, and share a technological fingerprint of the data between themselves, allowing them to not only identify when the images have been reposted, but also to identify new accounts of extremist users. The technique is similar to that used to catch and remove child abuse material.

But Erin Saltman, Facebook’s policy manager for counterterrorism matters, said it was not enough to just remove people posting images tagged in such a way. “Machines have never been very good at nuance,” she said. “Even a human can struggle with tone and context.”

The next step for the companies is to open that database up to smaller firms, such as Justpaste.it, which have little ability to police their own sites. To that end, they have formed the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, which involves providing not just access to the hashing database itself, but technical help in implementing it, as well as legal advice on the risks and responsibilities raised.

“If you are a small company, you have no way of accessing that knowledge,” said Pickles. “The forum will bring small companies together. For some, just admitting that terror is a problem isn’t easy.”

Go to Source

The White House and lawmakers want to reinstate a 1930s law they don’t understand

Hal S. Scott is professor of international financial systems at Harvard Law School and director of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation.

In recent months, the Trump administration and members of Congress have called for reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, a Depression-era law that separated commercial banking from investment banking. That would be a serious mistake. Instead, Congress should repeal the Dodd-Frank financial reform’s “Hotel California” provision, which prevents large banks from voluntarily separating their commercial and investment banking activities.

The biggest problem with the calls for the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall is a lack of understanding about Glass-Steagall itself.

Gary Cohn, director of President Trump’s National Economic Council, has in the name of Glass-Steagall called for treating large banks and small banks differently. A good idea, but nothing to do with Glass-Steagall. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has called for a 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act, but he has not specified what that means. And Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) recently asserted that a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall must completely separate commercial banking (accepting deposits and making loans) from investment banking (trading securities and helping companies raise capital), just like the orginal act did. Only it didn’t.

It is time to clear the air. The Glass-Steagall Act prohibited commercial banks from engaging in investment banking activities and vice-versa. Therefore, commercial banks could not underwrite certain securities, and investment banks could not take customer deposits. These laws remain in effect today. There is no need to bring them back.

The Glass-Steagall Act also prohibited commercial banks from affiliating with firms “principally engaged” in investment banking. In practice, this meant that there was very little affiliation between commercial banks and investment banks from the 1930s until the 1980s. But in the 1980s and 1990s, the Federal Reserve interpreted “principally engaged” to allow for affiliates of commercial banks to derive 10 percent, and eventually 25 percent, of revenue from investment banking. So, the affiliation of commercial banks with entities engaged in investment banking became common under Glass-Steagall itself.

Then, in 1999, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), which was championed by then-Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and signed into law by President Bill Clinton, repealed the Glass-Steagall Act’s restrictions on affiliation. The GLBA received widespread bipartisan support because it put the U.S. banking system on more equal footing with foreign competitors not subject to such restrictions.

However, the GLBA has received much of the blame for the 2008 financial crisis, and therefore many critics, including Warren and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), argue that we should reintroduce Glass-Steagall. In April, they and other senators introduced the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act, which would prohibit any affiliation between commercial banking and investment banking, thus going even further than Glass-Steagall itself.

But these calls for reinstating the repealed portions of the Glass-Steagall Act are misplaced — because the GLBA did not cause the financial crisis.

The financial crisis was caused by a bubble in residential and commercial mortgages that led to a widespread run on the global financial system. The securitization of mortgages (packaging mortgages into mortgage-backed securities) increased the size of the bubble through an opaque and often conflicted process. Ultimately, governments from across the world had to step in. But what does this have to do with the affiliation of commercial and investment banks? The answer is nothing.

The largest failure during the financial crisis was of a stand-alone investment bank, Lehman Brothers, that did not have significant commercial banking operations. The largest commercial banks that failed, including Washington Mutual and IndyMac, did not have any significant investment banking activities. AIG, which received $182 billion in government support, was a thrift holding company, and thrifts had always been exempt from the Glass-Steagall Act’s restrictions.

Which, finally, brings us to “Hotel California.” Oddly, while there are calls to mandate the complete separation of commercial banking from investment banking, there are no calls from Glass-Steagall champions to eliminate this Dodd-Frank provision, so dubbed for the well-known Eagles’ lyric, “You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave.”

Hotel California applies to commercial banking organizations that received Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) assistance and have more than $50 billion of assets. It prevents these banks from spinning off their investment-banking activities by deeming such an entity a “non-bank systemically important financial institution” subject to enhanced regulatory scrutiny, including significantly higher capital requirements.

Currently, Hotel California applies to 65 percent of U.S. banking assets, so eliminating it could significantly reduce the concentration and complexity of U.S. banking organizations. Activist shareholders could once again press large commercial banks to simplify if they think this would enhance their overall profitability — on a “too big to manage” rationale. Senior management of former investment banks, such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, might be inclined to separate their investment and commercial banking operations given the relative unimportance of deposit-taking to their overall operations.

Fortunately, repeal of Hotel California passed the House in June as part of the Financial CHOICE Act. The Senate should follow suit. Congress should therefore seriously consider empowering the management and shareholders of the largest U.S. banks, rather than mandating a wholesale redesign of the U.S. financial system based on a misunderstanding of a 1930s law and its role in the 2008 financial crisis.

Go to Source

Firms will now have to replace independent directors in 90 days

Exemption for govt firms from evaluation, shareholder nod rules seen as ‘regressive’


New Delhi, July 12:  

Companies will henceforth have to replace independent directors who resign or are removed from the Board within 90 days, against the earlier 180 days.

The Corporate Affairs Ministry has altered the code for independent directors under Schedule IV of the company law to this effect.

However, it has exempted government companies from seeking shareholders’ nod for appointing independent directors. Independent directors of government companies have also been exempted from the norm that required their re-appointment to be on the basis of an evaluation of their performance.

In face, there won’t be a need for a performance evaluation of independent directors in government companies.

Moreover, the independent directors at their separate meetings need not henceforth review the performance of non-independent directors, of the Board as a whole, or of the Chairman of the Board.

In sync with SEBI norms

Commenting on the development, SN Ananthasubramanian, Practising Company Secretary and former Company Secretaries’ Institute President, said this brings the Companies Act on par with the SEBI’s listing regulations.

“This shorter time period of 90 days will enhance the cause of good governance in unlisted companies also,” he said.

It will be interesting to see how the SEBI-appointed Uday Kotak Committee on Corporate Governance will respond to these exemptions, particularly in the context of SEBI Chairman Ajay Tyagi’s recent remarks on the independence of directors in listed government companies, Ananthasubramanian noted.

Corporate observers feel that exempting government companies from independent directors’ norms appears to be a “step backward”.

Lalit Kumar, Partner, J Sagar Associates, a law firm, said the requirement that independent directors be appointed within 90 days is to align the company law with SEBI (Listing Obligation and Disclosure) regulations, and it is a fair time period to find a replacement for an independent director.

(This article was published on July 12, 2017)

Please enter your email. Thank You.

Newsletter has been successfully subscribed.

Go to Source

Thanks … Obama? Foreign firms slash U.S. ‘investment’ in 2016

Getty Images

Irish “investment” in the U.S. fell sharply in 2016 after new rules cracked down on corporations seeking tax havens.

Foreign businesses invested 15% less in the United States last year, but it’s not a sign America has suddenly become a less attractive place to invest.

Direct foreign investment in the U.S. fell to $373.4 billion in 2016 from $439.6 billion in the prior year, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Wednesday.

The slowdown in foreign investment largely reflects a crackdown by the outgoing Obama administration on American companies seeking to move their headquarters outside the country to escape high U.S. corporate taxes.


The controversial tactic, used by Burger King and other large companies, is known as a corporate inversion. The Obama White House sought to block inversions by tightening tax rules to make it more costly — and the approach appears to have worked.

“BEA estimates that newly inverted U.S. corporations accounted for a significant share of first-year [foreign] expenditures in 2015, but not in 2016,” the report said.

The effects of the law are illustrated by Ireland. Irish companies spent a sizable $35.4 billion last year in the U.S., but that was down 80% from a huge $176 billion investment in 2015.

A large chunk of the Irish “investment” in 2015 consisted of American firms buying Irish rivals and moving their headquarters across the Atlantic. Some of those companies include Medtronic and Johnson Controls.

Virtually none of the investment in either 2015 or 2016 reflected spending on new or existing Irish-owned businesses in the U.S.

The stricter U.S. rules on inversions, however, are under review by the Trump White House and they could be dropped. President Trump has pressured American companies to keep jobs and headquarters in the U.S. and he’s promised to cut taxes and reduce regulations to entice them to stay.

Also read: Bernanke, Greenspan tell Trump not to impose steel tariffs

Although the White House has had some success in culling regulations, tax reform is on dicier political ground. Even if Republicans push through tax cuts, businesses are unlikely to reap the benefits until 2018 at the earliest.

In 2016, the U.K. invested the most in the United States at $54.5 billion. The U.K. was followed by Ireland, Switzerland ($34.9 billion), China (27.6 billion) and Japan ($18 billion).

Almost 98% of the investment in 2016 involved acquisitions of American companies, the government said. Just $5.6 billion was spent by foreign firms to start up new businesses in the U.S. and $2.2 billion was spent to expand existing U.S. operations.

The breakdown in investment in not unusual, though. Most firms seek to enter foreign markets by acquiring domestic companies instead of starting their own from scratch.

The amount of foreign investment in the U.S. in 2015 was probably a record, but it’s impossible to know for sure since funding for the annual government survey was cut from 2009 to 2013.

Go to Source