Saturday, September 7, 2013

ONE LEGAL WORD - ONE DAY: “OBDURATE”


Obdurate ob·du·rate  (bd-rt, -dy-)
adj.
1.
a. Hardened in wrongdoing or wickedness; stubbornly impenitent: "obdurate conscience of the old sinner" (Sir Walter Scott).
b. Hardened against feeling; hardhearted: an obdurate miser.
2. Not giving in to persuasion; intractable. See Synonyms at inflexible.

[Middle English obdurat, from Late Latin obdrtus, past participle of obdrreto harden, from Latin, to be hard, endure : ob-intensive pref.; see ob- + drushard; see deru-in Indo-European roots.]

obdu·rate·ly adv.
     obdu·rate·ness n.

obdurate [ˈɒbdjʊrɪt]
adj
1. not easily moved by feelings or supplication; hardhearted
2. impervious to persuasion, esp to moral persuasion
[from Latin obdūrāre to make hard, from ob- (intensive) + dūrus hard; compare endure]
obduracy , obdurateness n
obdurately  adv

— Harshly resolute; not open to compromise. An obdurate paralegal or client is callous, dogmatic and unwilling to consider alternatives. Obduracy can affect costs.
Further Reading:
“This case started as litigation based on a home insurance contract. The appellant suffered a loss and encountered obduracy and bad faith on the part of the respondent.”
“The Obdurate Rump: Conrad Black and the Flouting of Corporate Governance” – Paper presented by Marc Edge, Ph.D.

State-owned banks to get tough with willful defaulters



http://www.hindustantimes.com/Images/Popup/2013/9/06_09_13-buss23.gif

























Arnab Mitra and Mahua Venkatesh, Hindustan Times  New Delhi, September 05, 2013

The finance ministry has directed state-owned banks to get tough with willful defaulters. Promoters of companies seeking corporate debt restructuring (CDR) are likely to be asked for a list of personal assets and these will be charged to the lending banks to ensure that banks have sufficient collateral to cover their loans in case of defaults.
“We have asked banks to look into the issue of non-performing assets (NPA). It is high time they act tough with willful defaulters,” Rajiv Takru, secretary, financial services sector, told HT. There’s more. 
Banks will have to get valuations done to ensure that the collateral covers the value of the loan.
Banks will have to“There will be fewer willful defaults if promoters know their personal assets will be attached,” he said, adding, banks may even seek a change of management in case of gross mismanagement of a company that has gone for CDR.
Gross NPAs or bad loans in the banking system has touched 5%, causing concerns both for the Reserve Bank of India and the government.
According to a BCG-FICCI report, banks have cumulatively recast loan amounting to Rs. 2.5 trillion under the CDR exercise while most of it has been done in the last few months.
In 2012-13, banks restructured loans worth Rs.75,000 crore under CDR, almost double of that in 2011-12.
Bankers feared that a chunk of this could turn unproductive. “With the economy slowing down, there are several genuine cases, where repayment has become an issue but the problem is that there are several others who are taking advantage of the situation and this needs to be addressed,” a bank chairman who did not wish to be identified said.
CDR is aimed at providing relief to companies that are unable to repay their loans by extending the payback period and reducing the interest rate. Besides, these companies are also given a repayment holiday and the option to convert a part of the loan into equity.
In the first quarter of 2013-14, banks restructured loans of 12 companies with a total amount of Rs. 20,000 crore, including construction major Gammon India Ltd’s Rs. 13,500 crore and logistics company Arshiya International Ltd’s Rs. 3,000 crore. 



    Rs 1.43-lakh cr locked up in Debt Recovery Tribunals





    Over 42,000 cases....33 Debt Recovery Tribunals..... Rs 1.43-lakh crore. 

    BL:K Ramkumar :Mumbai :7 Sep 2013


    Over 42,000 cases are piled up before the 33 Debt Recovery Tribunals in the country locking up a whopping Rs 1.43-lakh crore. 

    This is because the number of loan recovery cases filed by banks and financial institutions is rapidly outstripping those getting disposed of.

    According to Finance Ministry data, from April 2012 to March 2013, banks and financial institutions filed 14,666 cases in DRTs to recover loans of Rs 48,037 crore. 

    In the same period, the Tribunals resolved 9,816 cases (including those carried over from previous years) aggregating Rs 18,692 crore. Thus, as on March-end 2013, the number of cases pending before the DRTs was 42,819 involving Rs 1,43,873 crore.

    Banks and financial institutions move the DRT for recovery of loans above Rs 10 lakh. The Tribunals also hear the pleas of borrowers against banks/financial institutions that have initiated legal proceedings to take possession of pledged assets under the Sarfaesi (Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest) Act for default in servicing loans of Rs 1 lakh and above.

    According to M. R. Umarji, Chief Legal Adviser, Indian Banks’ Association, the Tribunals are getting bogged down dealing with cases filed by banks and financial institutions and hearing the plea of borrowers against recovery action.

    According to him, recovery can be expedited by opening new Tribunals. Setting up a Tribunal to deal exclusively with the plea of borrowers against whom recovery action has been initiated could also help.

    Bankers complain that though the DRTs are supposed to dispose of a case within six months from the date of receiving an application by a bank/financial institution, in reality even the first hearing happens after a year.

    Banks name defaulters, but hesitate on publishing photos


    Rising bad loans and restructured advances have been a major concern for Indian banking industry in the recent years. Total gross non-performing assets (NPAs) of 40 listed Indian banks rose to `2.08 trillion as at end-June, up 40%, from the year ago-period. Photo: Mint

    Rising bad loans and restructured advances have been a major concern for Indian banking industry in the recent years. Total gross non-performing assets (NPAs) of 40 listed Indian banks rose to Rs.2.08 trillion as at end-June, up 40%, from the year ago-period. Photo: Mint



     Live mint :Manish Basu :Fri, Sep 06 2013. 12 57 AM IST
    Publishing photographs is an “extra-legal means” to recover loans, according to a court verdict
    What’s in a name? Not much perhaps, but a picture speaks a thousand words. Or, so it seems, when delinquent borrowers don’t take offence at their names being made public but hustle to courts to stop banks from publishing their photographs in newspaper advertisements.
    Until lately, banks have been publishing photographs of people who did not repay loans. At least two high court verdicts in 2006 were in favour of this practice. But, in the wake of a conflicting verdict issued by the Calcutta high court in May, banks are now confused whether they should continue to publish photographs of delinquent clients.
    In 2006, the Madras high court ruled that “if borrowers could find newer and newer methods to avoid repayment of loans, banks are also entitled to invent novel methods to recover their dues”.
    The same year, the Madhya Pradesh high court concluded that publication of pictures wasn’t defamatory in any manner for delinquent borrowers.
    By publishing photographs of defaulters, banks could up the ante, and recoveries improved “significantly”, said Deepak Narang, executive director at Kolkata-based United Bank of India.
    The tactic was particularly effective with retail borrowers and small entrepreneurs, said the law officer of a Kolkata-based public sector bank who did not wish to be identified. But with large conglomerates, it made “little or no difference at all”, according to this person.
    But the Calcutta high court formed a different view on this matter, and if it holds out against legal challenge at appeals courts, it could seriously impair loan recovery in the future, say bankers.
    Even after considering the verdicts of the Madras and Madhya Pradesh high courts, which were cited by lawyers for State Bank of India, Calcutta high court judge Dipankar Dutta ruled in early May that there was no provision for publishing photographs of defaulters under the Securitization and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest (Sarfaesi) Act. In his combined verdict on two similar writ petitions—both involving India’s biggest lender—Dutta said publishing photographs was an “extra-legal means” to recover loans, for which there was no “legislative sanction” under the Sarfaesi Act.
    It did not matter that banks weren’t prohibited from publishing photographs, Dutta said in his judgment, adding that he could not support the view that banks were at liberty to “invent novel methods to recover their dues”.
    For years, defaulters have argued that publishing their photographs was a “coercive” tactic which infringed upon a person’s right to privacy.
    Whereas judges before Dutta had ruled that right to privacy wasn’t “absolute” and that banks could disclose borrowers’ identity along with their photographs in the event of delinquency, the Calcutta high court judge ruled that lenders were not allowed to adopt any means at all to recover loans unless they were clearly “authorized by law”.
    After this Calcutta high court judgment, other banks such as United Bank of India and UCO Bank gave instructions to all their branches not to publish photographs of defaulters in statutory notices issued under the Sarfaesi Act.
    “Banks that have been granting us loans without any complaint, cannot suddenly defame us by issuing public notices with our pictures for delays in repayment,” says Bipin Kumar Vohra, a Kolkata-based businessman who recently dragged Allahabad Bank to court for publishing his photograph in a public notice.
    Such notices pointing at delinquent companies and their directors for the benefit of other potential lenders were “completely unnecessary” because they could not on their own assess creditworthiness of each firm, says Vohra, who has claimed Rs.100 crore in compensation from Allahabad Bank for defamation.
    Two of Vohra’s firms collectively owe at least Rs.1,200 crore to a consortium of lenders.
    Vohra, though, didn’t immediately secure any interim order as the Calcutta high court said it would hear the dispute between him and Allahabad Bank only after the division bench of the court had disposed of the appeals filed against Dutta’s judgement from May.
    Rising bad loans and restructured advances have been a major concern for Indian banking industry in the recent years. Total gross non-performing assets (NPAs) of 40 listed Indian banks rose to Rs.2.08 trillion as at end-June, up 40%, from the year ago-period. Top five banks with highest NPA numbers areCentral Bank of India (6.03%) Dhanlaxmi Bank Ltd (5.78%), State Bank of Mysore (5.61%), United Bank of India (5.59%) and UCO Bank (5.58%).
    Concerned over the rise in bad loans, banks had become more aggressive in recovering their dues, including making the details of promoters in public. The State Bank of India (SBI), country’s largest lender, had a major clamp down on wilful defaulters—companies that have failed to repay loans even though they have the capacity to make payments, by classifying 274 companies as wilful defaulters in the year ended 31 March, after pushing 383 into that category in the previous fiscal.
    With this, SBI classified 657 companies, which have defaulted on loans worth Rs.5,700 crore as wilful defaulters in the past two years. About 60% of the defaulters are mid-size corporate firms with an average loan size of Rs.60-70 crore. SBI began compiling the wilful defaulters’ list in 1999. As at end June, SBI had gross NPAs of 5.56% of its total loans.

    Indian-American named judge in California



     IANS :Sep 7,2013

    A leading Indian American lawyer, Sunil R. Kulkarni, has become the first South Asian American state judge in Northern California with his appointment to Santa Clara County Superior Court.
    Palo Alto, California, resident Kulkarni, 41 who since 2011 has served as a senior counsel in the litigation group at the University of California, was named to the new post by California governor, Jerry Brown, last week local ethnic newspaper India-West reported.
    Indian American Paul Singh Grewal in 2010 was appointed a magistrate judge, a federal post, in US District Court for the Northern District of California, according to the South Asian Bar Association of Northern California.
    Born in Los Angeles, Kulkarni grew up in King City, California, in southern Monterey County. He has a BS from University of California-Berkeley and a law degree from the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law.
    The Indian American attorney was a law clerk for Judge Oliver W. Wagner in the US District Court for the Eastern District of California from 1996-97 and held various positions at Morrison and Foerster LLP from 1998-2011, including partner and associate.
    There has been a flurry of recent appointments and nominations of South Asians to the judiciary in California.
    They include Rupa S. Goswami, who was appointed by Brown to Los Angeles County Superior Court; Alka Sagar, who was named a federal magistrate judge for the Central District of California; and Vince Girdhari Chhabria, who was nominated by President Barack Obama to the US District Court for Northern California.
    According to the South Asian Bar Association of Southern California, Sagar became the first South Asian woman to serve as a federal judge in the Central District and the first South Asian woman federal judge west of the Mississippi.

    Courts will protect honest officers’ rights: SC




     IANS:7 thSep 2013


    There is no reason to fear that the higher courts will not protect the rights of honest officers, the Supreme Court said on Thursday when the government insisted on retaining the power to approve graft probes against public servants.

    The government claimed that its nod should precede corruption case investigations against officers of the rank of joint secretary and above to safeguard their interests.
    The apex court bench of justice RM Lodha, justice Madan B Lokur and justice Kurian Joseph said, “The Supreme Court and high courts being the constitutional courts are the protector and guardians of the rights of the people, then why will they not protect the rights of the honest officer.”
    The court said this in the course of the hearing of the government response on whether its prior sanction was an absolute must for investigations against bureaucrats and whether the power gets vested in the Central Vigilance Commission after giving it the power to supervise the CBI’s investigation.
    The issue surfaced in the course of the hearing on public interest litigations seeking cancellation of coal blocks that were irregularly allocated.
    The court made it clear that its hearing was not limited to any particular case but was only concerned with the “ambit and scope” of Section 6A of Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, a law that controls the legal powers of the CBI.
    At the outset of the hearing, the court brushed aside a plea by petitioner advocate Manohar Lal Sharma seeking the investigation into the role of all the former coal ministers and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the period when he was looking after the ministry.
    The court was told that the CBI has already filed 13 first information reports and has just named those who were allocated coal blocks and neither the officials nor the ministers involved in the alleged wrongdoings.
    The judges said the investigations were still in preliminary stages and it would not digress from the issue of examining the ambit and scope of Section 6A of DSPE Act, which they were hearing Thursday.
    Under Section 6A of the act, it is mandatory for the CBI to seek prior sanction of the government for investigating an officer of the joint secretary rank or above for alleged offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
    Attorney General GE Vahanvati told the court that the court directed or court monitored investigation by the CBI did not stand on a different footing from normal investigation when it came to following the procedure of seeking advance permission of the government.
    The government asserted that the apex court could not “waive off or negate” the express statutory provision as Section 6A of the DSPE Act was in the nature of “procedure established by law”.
    Vahanvati told the court that it (court) could not say by way of clarification that prior approval of the government was not required as the powers of supervision of investigation by the CBI have been shifted to the Central Vigilance Commission.
    He told the court that as and when the investigating agency would approach the government for sanction under Section 6A of the DPSE Act, the government would pass a reasoned order.
    In the event of the government rejecting the investigating agency’s request for sanction, the issue could be brought before the court to determine its correctness, the attorney general told the court.
    “The view why sanction has been denied will be before the court. Both points of view (that of the government and the CBI) will be there for the court to consider. The decision of the government will not be final. The view of the court will be final,” the attorney general told the court.
    “When the court is balancing the interest, then the government should have the right to decide on sanction and same can be done in four weeks,” Vahanvati told the court.


    Tuesday, September 3, 2013

    No money or flying permit for Kingfisher but Mallya's 'never say die' spirit intact



    FP :Sindhu Bhattacharya Sep 3, 2013


    New Delhi: The never say die spirit of Vijay Mallya is admirable. The chairman of Kingfisher Airlines has no flying permit, crores in debt from lenders with myriad legal cases, unpaid employee dues and no visible plan in sight to bring in fresh capital to restart the airline. But he still dreams of restarting the airline. In the annual report for 2012-13, which he has sent to shareholders ahead of the proposed AGM of Kingfisher on 24 September, Mallya has said 

    Kingfisher remains in dialogue with “several investors and believes that there is a rationale for investment for various strategic and non-strategic investors. As on the date of this report, your company is engaged in discussions with one such potential investor.” 

    Any guesses which investor is now willing to take on a dead airline, faulty planes, absent workforce and insurmountable debt? 

    Under the heading ‘Management Discussion and Analysis’ Mallya has referred to several global full service airlines keenly watching the Indian market and financial investors in the Indian aviation industry looking for an exit.

     It is interesting to note that late last year, when news was trickling in about Abu Dhabi based Etihad Airways being in talks with India’s Jet Airways for an equity partnership, Kingfisher had let it be known that Etihad was conducting its due diligence. Vijay Mallya in this file photo. Reuters Though this was never officially confirmed, Kingfisher managed to raise everyone’s hopes on a possible equity infusion by Etihad, which eventually did not happen. So Mallya’s assertion in the annual report again about ongoing discussions with one potential investor are certainly curious. 

    Mallya has devoted quite some time in detailing out why a potential investor should come forward. Among the reasons he has put forth include Kingfisher having enough qualified staff, at least 12 aircraft premium slots and a lapsed flying permit which can be renewed.

     Here’s what all he has said: 
    1) Will give any investor a foothold in one of the fastest growing aviation markets in the world, that is India. 
    2) Growing importance of aviation in policy making, such as opening up of Indian aviation industry to foreign airline investments.
     3) New airports and other aviation infrastructure coming up. 
    4) Kingfisher’s promoters are willing to continue support for the airline’s revival. 
    5) Valuation of Kingfisher is “very attractive” at the moment. 
    6) Brand Kingfisher, where a recent brand valuation conducted by Grant Thornton put the brand value at $550 million once the airline business becomes operational. 
    7) Scheduled Air Operator’s Permit (SOP) which can be renewed anytime within two years by capitalising the airline in line with the revival plan submitted to DGCA.
     8) Kingfisher has 12 aircraft and is “confident of” acquiring additional aircraft  during the ramp up. 
    9) Senior and mid level managers and sufficient number of pilots, engineers, dispatchers still on Kingfisher’s rolls to operate up to 20 aircraft. Additional staff can be hired as the airline business ramps up. 
    10) Ground handling equipment and aircraft spares to support the fleet.
     11) Access to most of the premium slots besides curbside and ramp space at various airports. 

    Mallya has also referred to the fact that Kingfisher has already submitted a two phase revival plan to regulator DGCA. Phase one involved restarting the airline operations with a limited fleet of 7 aircraft (5 Airbus + 2 ATRs), gradually increasing to 21 aircraft (10 Airbus + 11 ATRs) in a period of 3-4 months. Kingfisher’s parent UB Group offered to organise funding of approximately Rs 650 crore to implement this phase. The second phase envisaged bringing a new investor with fresh capital. This plan would address the issues of debt restructuring, servicing, and repayment. 

    The UB Group agreed to organise financing for a limited restart. Mallya says in the annual report that “While the authorities remain supportive of your company’s restart, these authorities are awaiting recapitalisation of your company for granting the necessary permissions for renewal of the SOP and restart of operations.” 

    So in effect, unless Mallya succeeds in getting funds, none of his plans can materialise. Meanwhile, Mallya also said in the annual report that Kingfisher has filed a $234 million lawsuit for damages from International Aero Engines AG citing engine defects. The lawsuit citing deficiency in IAE’s V2500 A5 engine was filed in a court in Bangalore. 

    Engine problems and difficult operating environment were cited by the carrier as reasons for Kingfisher’s financial stress. The airline grounded its fleet in October after employees walked out over delayed salaries. 

    Thereafter, DGCA suspended the airline’s permit because of service disruptions and the permit lapsed on 31 December last year. Kingfisher’s lessors have repossessed aircraft after payment defaults and the Airports Authority of India sued the airline because it failed to pay Rs 300 crore of airport fees
    .