Corporate Insolvency Resolution in India

This paper analyses the corporate insolvency resolution procedures of India, the United Kingdom and Singapore within a common framework of well-specified principles. India, at present, lacks a single, comprehensive law that addresses all aspects of insolvency of a firm. It has multiple laws, regulations and adjudication fora, each of which have created opportunities for debtor firms to exploit the arbitrage between these to frustrate recovery efforts of creditors. This adversely affects the resolution process, the time to recovery and the value recovered. The importance of a comprehensive, well-functioning insolvency resolution framework has been documented in the literature. In India, the Bankruptcy Law Reforms Committee was constituted in 2014 with the objective of proposing a comprehensive framework for resolving the insolvency of firms and individuals. This paper undertakes a comparison of the corporate insolvency resolution framework in the UK, Singapore and India, with the underlying motivation to highlight the similarities and differences across the laws, procedures and institutional context of the three countries.