The Centre for Insolvency and Bankruptcy & City of London Corporation is delighted to announce a Virtual Panel Discussion: ‘Hitting a pause in a Pandemic – Insolvency & Bankruptcy Policy 2020 and beyond’ The pandemic has impacted firms globally, by reducing demand for their products and services, disrupting the supply of inputs and tightening the provision of credit take in the medium and long-term.

Themes of Discussion

• Evaluate the insolvency measures implemented to help, until the markets have stabilized.

• The macro-economic and creditors view.

• Insolvency systems will have to respond to both the failure of firms and firms unable to restructure their debts. How are policymakers going to respond to these challenges.

IICA and ICSI in a collaborative approach organized a Webinar on June 20, 2020 for Familiarization of Independent Directors. Nearly 350 participants comprising of Independent Directors in profession or aspiring, were oriented on the roles and responsibilities with due diligence to companies before joining as a director there. It also enriched participants on necessity of thorough checking of the financial statements, being vigilant about red flags instead of relying blindly on the auditors of a company.

The Webinar inaugural speech was addressed by Vice President of ICSI, CS Nagendra Rao, on orientation of Independent Directors relating to roles, rights and duties, followed by a congratulatory note to IICA for the initiative taken.

Dr. Niraj Gupta, IICA in his addressing stressed on regulation and emphasized upon the need for Independent Directors to be more innovative in their approaches.

Ms. Vijaya Sampat, an eminent Independent Director; serving boards of various companies, shared her experiences on conversant with actions, time, maturity while joining as an Independent Directors.

Session had a follow-up Question-Answer session, moderated by CS Manish Gupta and responded by esteemed speakersDr. Niraj Gupta, IICA; Shri JN Gupta MD, Shareholders Empowerment Services and CS Ranjeet Pandey, Council Member and Immediate Past President, ICSI.

National Foundation for Corporate Social Responsibility (NFCSR) organised a webinar as part of the Friday Webinar Series on the topic “Lessons Learned from COVID-19 from a System Thinking Perspective and Integrative Value Management” by renowned Prof. Dr. Wayne Visser on 19 June 2020 at 16:30 PM - IST.

Prof. Dr. Wayne Visser is Professor of Integrated Value and holder of the Chair in Sustainable Transformation at Antwerp Management School, Belgium. He is one of the world’s Top 10 most influential faculty thinkers on issues of responsible business in social media, among top 100 influencer on CSR and sustainable business, top 100 thought-leaders in trustworthy business and top 100 sustainability leader.

A total of 207 participants across sectors registered for the webinar. The webinar continued for 90 minutes and was moderated by Prof. Dr. Garima Dadhich, Head, NFCSR. The webinar made use of audio-visual and interactive methodologies such as the use of power points, visuals and polling questions.

A webinar report was prepared and shared with the registered participants. The webinar session helped in understanding how the pandemic largely looked as a global crisis also provides an opportunity in defining social norms, practices and priorities towards a transformative sustainable society. It can be seen by multiple illustrations from the globe, how the systemic breakdown threatens to undermine the multi-level systems on which we rely for a well-functioning society and good quality of life.

The participants of the 3 months Online ICP in Implementing CSR Projects have progressed to the Third Module Implementing an Impactful CSR Project. The participants understood the concept and importance of Baseline/Need Assessment Study, Tools of a Robust Monitoring Techniques, Community Engagement and Exit Strategy by Mr. Praveen Kumar Karn, Group Head CSR, Spark Minda; Dr. Rama Sridhar, Consultant (MSW TISS); Dr. Joyatri Ray, Director, Equations; Ms. Manisha Patil, Lead – CSR Community Engagement, Amazon; and Mr. Prasant Mohanty, CSR Specialist, Amazon. The participants have started with Fourth Module on Measuring Impact of the CSR Projects wherein they have been given the detailed insight on Social Return on Investment (SROI) and Creating Shared Values (CSV).

In the ICP 3 month, ICP CSR course held on the online BB platform of IICA, high-value session on Social return on investment (SROI) was undertaken by Social Sustainability and CSR Expert Mr. Christian Chandra, Senior Program Manager, Social Responsibility, Amazon. SROI is a method for measuring values that are not traditionally reflected in financial statements, including social, economic, and environmental factors.

The session shared an introduction to SROI and shared value, principles and stages of SROI and how to measure shared value. SROI examples and practices from the Globe and India were discussed in breath to provide the practitioners with illustrations in understanding and undertaking SROI studies. Chandran discussed the growing field of SROI in India and it’s relevance and viability in the coming years.

School of Corporate Governance & Public Policy, IICA has launched the 5th Batch of its Certificate course with a blended learning approach. The course will be delivered using Virtual classes with 3 in-person sessions at the beginning, mid and at the convocation of the program. The 5th batch received an overwhelming response from the private sector companies and professionals working in corporate governance field. A total of 32 professionals are participating in the program.

Due to COVID-19 crisis, the first In-person session was delivered in Virtual Mode on June 15, 2020. The theme of the session was CORPORATE GOVERNANCE TODAY AND TOMORROW: “NAVIGATING THROUGH COVID 19 CRISIS. The In Person full daylong session was delivered through Learning Management System (LMS) – Blackboard.

The In Person session initiated with the welcome and theme address, delivered by Program Director, Dr. Niraj Gupta. The participants were provided with an orientation to the learning journey in the course using six modules and their coverage.

With an objective to foster the peer learning, the participants shared their experiences in their respective work profiles and also expressed their expectations from the program. The program featured three Power Talks delivered by eminent experts from academia and Industry followed by Q & A session. The following speakers delivered their Power Talk focusing the theme of In Person session and shared multiple concerns which corporate governance professionals are required to focus.

Mr. Daniel Trnka, in his session apprised the participants on OECD’s work on regulatory reform and regulatory improvement from 1995 till date and introduced them to the latest series of OECD’s Best practice principles for the regulators & the upcoming OECD work on regulation. Mr. Trnka elaborated the OECD’s 2012 recommendation of the council on regulatory policy and governance and focused on the importance of having a designated body for overseeing the quality of regulations through several examples of the US & UK. He used diagrammatic representation and case-based approach and gave numerous examples to explain the regulatory Policy making process for ensuring quality of regulations, which was very effective. The participants of the webinar were regulatory experts, government officials, academicians and senior officials from FOIR member organizations including Mr. Satpal Garg, Member, PNGRB, Dr. Mukulita Vijayawargiya, Member, IBBI and Shri T. S. Balasubramanian, Member TAMP.

Mr. Eric Thomson explained the concept of Cost-benefit analysis, benefits &limitations of cost-benefit analysis, the process to identify costs & benefits and how to use all of it together. Mr. Thomson in his session explained the cost benefit analysis process which has various steps involved in it, starting from identifying the issue for which the regulations are made and ending with the actual measurement of the risk associated with the proposed regulation, which further becomes the base for taking decisions or adopting a particular regulation by the regulators. Mr. Thomson also shared several tips & tricks for conducting a cost-benefit analysis. The participants received great insights on the Cost-benefit analysis from the subject-matter expert and gained from his experiences.

Mr. Ariel Ezrachi explained the concept of Digital Economy and its competition law perspectives to the participants. He covered various topics such as benefits of digital economy, Power of platform business markets, Policy debate questions, Anti-competitive activities in the digital markets, Market power & self-favoritism, Quality degradation & exploitation, Data harvesting, Behavioral discrimination and Digital Collusion in his session. Mr. Ezrachi encouraged the participants to read several books & papers i.e.‘Virtual Competition’ (HUP), ‘Competition Overdose’ (Harper Colins), Ariel Ezrachi & Maurice Stucke ‘Sustainable & unchallenged algorithmic tacit collusion’ and Stigler report on Digital platforms which would apprise them in detail on the subject. Energetic participation from various regulators, competition law professionals and top law firms such as Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas, Trilegal, AZB & partners etc. was seen in the webinar. Mr. Dhanendra Kumar, Former Chairman, Competition Commission of India (CCI), raised a question on the role of big data in mergers & acquisitions with respect to data harvesting & other anti-competitive practices, which was effectively answered by Mr. Ezrachi.

Dr.Thibault Schrepel, in his session elaborated the concept of blockchain technology & its anti-trust perspectives to the participants in an easy and effective manner. He explained the technicalities of the blockchain platform in order to create a link between the blockchain technology and competition law for better understanding of the participants.He encouraged the participants to read his paper on "Blockchain Code as Antitrust”, co-authored with VitalikButerin, founder of the second largest cryptocurrency platform, ‘Ethereum’. Dr. Schrepel also threw light on an article titled “The nature of the Firm” written by Nobel-winning author Ronald Coase, which marked the base of the modern business law and competition law. He elaborated the theory stated by Ronald Coase and shared with the participants his work in furtherance to the same titled “The theory of granularity: A Path for Antitrust in Blockchain Ecosystems”. The technicalities of the blockchain technology were explained by Dr. Thibault in a simple manner for the understanding of the regulators and participants who are from a non-tech background