Articles and Updates

• Sawant Singh -

The recently issued draft Microfinance Institutions (Development and Regulation) Bill, 2011, offers a ray of hope for India’s crisis stricken microfinance institutions (MFIs). Over the last couple of years, the industry has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons: the very public boardroom squabbles of a premier MFI and suicides by poor farmers, allegedly as a result of harassment by loan recovery agents.

• -

In recent times, India’s foreign direct investment (FDI) policy has consistently mirrored the changing economic trends. The evolutionary trait of India’s FDI policy has endeared it to the investor community across the globe. This year has witnessed fresh initiatives aimed at making the Indian FDI terrain more investor-friendly. We trace the contours of a few key changes in India’s FDI policy – some already in effect and others still on the anvil.

• Kartikeya Singh -

In 2009, in an important step that gave enterprises the flexibility to combine the features of a partnership with that of a limited liability company, the government of India enabled the creation of limited liability partnerships (LLPs). However, at that time, India’s foreign direct investment (FDI) policy did not permit foreign investment in LLPs. Over the last year, perhaps mindful of falling FDI and the need to create alternate avenues for such investment, the government has been revisiting its FDI norms. A

• Arun Madhu -

The eagerly awaited new consolidated FDI policy was released by the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP) on 31 March. We round up the major highlights of this document, which is commonly known as circular 1 of 2011.

• Saket Shukla -

On 9 February the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) released an exposure draft of an order on Schemes of Arrangement and Transfers of Non-Life Insurance Business. In it the Indian insurance sector regulator sets out directions intended to cover all types of transfers of general insurance business including specifically, court-driven schemes of arrangements and amalgamations of general insurers under the Companies Act, 1956.