SEBI’s decision to amend the SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulation 2020 (SEBI LODR) to compel disclosure on forensic audit surprised both companies and investors. The regulation requires companies to disclose, on the stock exchanges, forensic audits at the time of initiation, and file the forensic audit report along with management comments once the audit has been completed. The requirement for disclosure related to forensic audit or “by whatever n

Boards overall, have been diffident to get their arms around things digital. In part this reluctance may be because the internet was not something many of today’s board members grew-up with and partly because the technology teams have prided themselves in speaking in a language that only the techno-cognoscenti understand. But given the shift that is underway, boards have no option but to thrust themselves into this conversation. Read our blog.

The Companies Act 2013, requires companies appoint independent directors for a five-year starting April 2014. In 2019, in most companies, most directors were reappointed for another five-year term – the maximum permitted under the law. This will create a cliff in 2024 when most IDs, including Committee Chair must retire. They will need to be replaced by new IDs without the benefit of overlap and orderly succession at Board level. SEBI has mandated that Boards need to identif

Institutional investors no longer have the patience for the lack of compliance by PSEs on board composition. In the 2020 voting season, investors have pushed back on board appointments/reappointments: 26.6% of the 188 resolutions for director re-appointment proposed by these 45 PSE’s had more than a 20% institutional investors voting against, of which 3.2% had between 40-50% and 4.3% more than 50% against. It is time that regulators step in and enforce compliance for board co

Hetal Dalal, our President and COO, spoke at the International Corporate Governance Network’s (ICGN) Virtual Summit 2020, where she presented an overview on India’s progress on the corporate governance agenda. Some of the areas which were discussed were: What is shaping the governance debate in India? What is working in India - and some of what is unique to India Areas where India can do better Overall trends for India Click here to read a summary of her comments.

In this guest column Sandeep Hasurkar weaves extracts from his just published book on ILFS ‘Never too big to fail,’ with lessons the collapse holds for boardrooms. The dramatic failure of Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd. (IL&FS), the infrastructure to financial services behemoth, in September 2018 was as unexpected as it was seismic. Its sudden collapse triggered shock waves that ripped through financial markets and the economy, throwing the NBFC/shadow bankin