Corporate resolution: Larsen & Toubro moves NCLT against Bhushan Steel
A corporate tug-of-war has broken loose, with infrastructure major Larsen & Toubro (L&T) moving the National Company Law Tribunal’s (NCLT’s) Delhi Bench against the Bhushan Steel resolution process. Tata Steel on Wednesday had announced it had emerged the highest bidder for the Delhi-based steel company, beating Sajjan Jindal-promoted JSW. L&T alleged that Bhushan Steel, undergoing corporate resolution, had defaulted on payment of Rs 9.62 billion for construction of its Angul factory in Odisha. Under the procedure set by the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), L&T had claimed the amount by filing a prescribed form with the resolution professional (RP) Vijay Kumar Iyer of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu in August 2017.
GST Council’s Saturday meet to sort out filing, E-Way Bill issues
The Centre and States are set to iron out the wrinkles in the Goods and Services Tax including a simplified return filing process and the pending E-Way Bill, as well as discuss the revenue mop-up and inclusion of real estate under the levy. The Goods and Services Tax Council is scheduled to meet on March 10 and is expected to discuss the process of a new single page monthly return for GST. However, since this will require about three-four months’ time for readying the IT system, the Council is also expected to extend GSTR-3B till June. Currently, taxpayers can file the summarized GSTR-3B return, instead of GSTR 2 and GSTR 3, but this facility is available only till March. A Group of Ministers led by Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi had met on February 24 and deliberated on the new simplified return but the meeting remained inconclusive.
‘Related Party’ clause may be eased in Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code
NEW DELHI: The government may seek to ease the ‘related party’ norms of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) to ensure the law is not overly restrictive and doesn’t cut down the number of those eligible to bid for assets, effectively weakening competition and reducing the amount that banks can recoup, a senior government official told ET. “We should not have any unintended exclusion,” the official said. “This requires a very diligent review.” The IBC was strengthened by ordinance and then by amendment to prevent promoters from regaining control of assets in insolvency proceedings unless they repaid their dues. It also sought to restrict those related or connected to them in some way from doing so.
PNB may be given 1 year to provision against fraud
The Reserve Bank may provide four quarters to Punjab National Bank for making provisions against the country’s biggest ever banking fraud of Rs 12,646 crore allegedly masterminded by billionaire diamantine Nirav Modi. The bank has written a letter to the banking sector regulator seeking its opinion on making provisions for the fraud, sources said. Although there is a direction of the RBI on provisioning to be made in case of loan fraud, the bank is taking pre-emptive action to deal with extraordinary situation created by unearthing of this mega fraud. There is no precedent of fraudulent Letter of Undertaking (LoUs) issued earlier, so the RBI is likely to allow PNB to make provisions against the fraud over not more than four quarters.
Sebi returns NSE’s consent application in algo scam
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has returned the consent application filed by the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and some of its executives in the collocation case, delaying its share-sale plans. The regulator wants to investigate the alleged preferential treatment to a few high-frequency traders and brokers to the exchange’s trading platform before considering the consent application. Consent orders are similar to out-of-court settlements in securities law parlance. The entities involved seek to settle without admitting guilt. The Sebi move is expected to delay NSE’s initial public offering. Collocation is the positioning of servers in proximity with those of the exchange to reduce latency to the minimum.
NCLT admits Aircel’s bankruptcy plea, rejects GTL Infrastructure’s intervention
Mumbai: The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on Thursday admitted the bankruptcy petition filed by Aircel Ltd, even as it rejected the intervention sought by GTL Infrastructure Ltd, an operational creditor of the Chennai-based telecom company. GTL had earlier filed a case against Aircel in the Delhi high court over non-payment of dues. It intervened in the bankruptcy case, arguing that the high court in a 29 January interim order had said that separate applications had to be filed before it for issues such as sale of assets. The next high court hearing is on Monday.
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