The Rajya Sabha on Wednesday approved the Competition (Amendment) Bill 2009 which was passed by the Lok Sabha. The Bill repeals and replaces the Competition (Amendment) Ordinance, 2009. The Bill provides for transfer of anti-competition cases pending before the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission (MRTPC) to an appellate tribunal. With this, the commission would cease to exist, two years ahead of its scheduled closure. Tabling the Bill, Minister of State for...

Government and regulators need to focus on the systemic risk engendered by excessive compensation. As calendar year 2009 draws to a close, it is bonus season for the financial sector in the West. In the last several months, the need to cap bonuses and compensation packages has been extensively discussed in the context of limiting the future impact of the next financial sector breakdown. On December 9, 2009, the UK was...

Corporate governance codes work only where firms believe working in a legal, ethical and transparent fashion also means good business. It is not in dispute that good corporate governance is all about commitment of a company to run its businesses in a legal, ethical and transparent manner, and that the tone must be set at the top. But are companies in India convinced that good business is all about good corporate...

Paul A. Samuelson, the first American Nobel laureate in economics and the foremost academic economist of the 20th century, died Sunday at his home in Belmont, Mass. He was 94. His death was announced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which Samuelson helped build into one of the world’s great centres of graduate education in economics. In receiving the Nobel Prize in 1970, Samuelson was credited with transforming his discipline from...

There is substantial capacity in the cooperative sugar sector. Reform of the sector needs transparency, enforcement of prudential norms and effective governance. Multi State Cooperatives can now become Producer Companies under the Companies Act by the Second Amendment in 2002 based on a Draft Act prepared by a Committee I chaired. As far as possible conflict of interest, reporting norms and so on need enforcement for Cooperatives as in Company...