India has emerged as an important foreign market for a number of global tech giants over the past decade as Meta, Google and Amazon race to find the next great growth geography. probably last. Now, the South Asian country is looking to leverage its vast reach to influence mergers and acquisitions abroad.
New Delhi has proposed to amend the Competition Act, Friday 2002 to introduce a number of changes including requiring the permission of the local supervisory authority (Competition Commission of India) for all overseas transactions in excess of $252 million for companies with “substantial business in India”.
India, the world’s second largest internet market has investments draw out tens of billions of dollars from Meta, Google and Amazon, and venture capitalists including SoftBank, Sequoia, and Tiger Global, have traditionally scrutinized deals based on asset size, not transaction value. According to law firm Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas, Indian regulators have approved more than 700 dental fillings in the past decade alone.
But things seem to be changing and trying to put India on par with China, the US and Europe.
“There has been a significant growth of the Indian markets and a paradigm shift in the way businesses operate over the past decade. In view of the economic development, the emergence of various business models and the experience gained from the Commission’s activities, the Government of India has established the Competition Law Review Committee, to consider consider and propose amendments to the said Act, ” Invoices are released on Friday afternoon speak.
The Competition (Amendment) Bill of 2022 proposed the following changes:
(a) changes in certain definitions such as “enterprise”, “relevant product market”, “Group”, “Control”, etc., to provide clarity;
(b) expand the scope of anticompetitive agreements and include a party facilitating anticompetitive agreements under such agreements;
(c) provide for the reduction of the time limit for the approval of the complexes from two hundred and ten days to one hundred and fifty days and the provision of a preliminary opinion by the Commission within twenty days for the expeditious approval of the complexes;
(d) provisions for “transaction value” as another criterion for notifying the Commission of incorporation;
(e) a three-year period to submit information about anticompetitive agreements and abuse of a dominant position before the Commission;
(f) The Committee appoints the Director-General with the prior approval of the Central Government;
(g) introduce the Settlement and Commitment framework to reduce lawsuits;
H.
(i) replace a provision providing for a penalty of up to one rupee or imprisonment for up to three years or both in cases contrary to any order of the National Company Law Court of Appeal with a contempt provision ;
(j) issue guidelines including penalties imposed by the Commission.
The move comes at a time when bankers in India are brokering record numbers of mergers and acquisitions even as trading activity slows elsewhere. According to Bloomberg, India has seen more than $82 billion worth of transactions completed or seeking approval in the quarter ending June. The flow of transactions in India is expected to continue to grow. further develop.
“India is a super important market for sovereign funds, private equity and global pension funds,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, head of investment banking in India for JP Morgan. and Southeast Asia, in a recent television interview.
