2014-15 is likely to be the year for massive changes to the regulatory framework within which Corporate India operates. Not only will we be operating under a new Companies Act 2013, but are likely to have the new Direct Tax Code (DTC), and possibly a unified Goods and Service Tax (GST).
The year 2014 saw e-commerce sector keep everyone on the toes — be it the e-marketplace operators, logistics / supply-chain companies, vendors selling online as well as customers. The sector also ensured an action-packed year in terms of fund-raising by players like Flipkart, Amazon.in, Snapdeal, Jabong, Myntra, Bigbasket and Urbanladder, among others.
In all, Indian companies have concluded 247 M&A deals worth $16.17 billion this year, according to data from Grant Thornton India Llp. That’s the highest since 2010, when 373 domestic deals worth $18.3 billion were reached.
As a New Year gift, the government on Monday cleared an ordinance to amend the land acquisition Act, which will ease the land acquisition norms for power, housing and defence projects and pave the way for commissioning of stalled projects worth throusands of crores of rupees.
The challenges imposed on India Inc by the Companies Act, on the CSR component is not the spend. Rather, it is on how it has to be spent, as stakeholders concerned would now, not just see it as a benevolence, but also from the perspective of accountability.
CII Director General Chandrajit Banerjee said higher FDI in insurance “will help attract much-needed long term capital for the sector and would have multiplier effect on the state of economy, especially in meeting the huge infrastructure financing requirements.
There was plenty of media buzz with global investors and entrepreneurs such as Mayoshi Son, Jack Ma, Jeff Bezos and Ratan Tata investing and betting big on the Indian online market.
This year, private equity (PE) funds pumped in $11 billion into Indian companies, 11 per cent more than last year, according to a report by Grant Thornton. While the overall merger & acquisition (M&A) volume in the country stands at $37 billion, the volume generated through qualified institutional placements and initial public offerings (IPOs) is $5 billion.
The Union Cabinet late on Wednesday cleared the Constitutional Amendment Bill for Goods and Service Tax (GST), paving the way for the Bill to be presented in the Parliament in the winter session itself that concludes on December 23. The Centre and the states reached a consensus on all contentious issues earlier this week.
The amendments propose to relax the rules for related party transactions, drop the minimum capitalisation norms and prescribe a threshold for reporting fraud by auditors. They also prescribe penalty for companies raising deposits illegally.
