The government may be waiting for the outcome of an arbitration initiated against its levy of Rs 10,247 crore retrospective tax on UK's Cairn Energy Plc before deciding on appealing against losing a tax case against Vodafone Group, sources said. An international arbitral tribunal is expected to give a decree within next few days on Cairn Energy Plc's challenge to the Indian government seeking Rs 10,247 crore in retrospective taxes. If the arbitration award in the Cairn cases goes against India, the government has to pay the British firm over Rs 7,600 crore to reverse the dividend and tax refund it had ceased and shares it sold to recover part of the tax demand.
The much-talked-about sale of Ambuja Cement and ACC by Holcim Group will see the single-biggest outflow of foreign capital from the country if the two cement firms are acquired by Indian investors. The deal, valued at nearly $10.35 billion, will put in the shade Cairn Energy Plc's exit from India in 2010, when it sold Cairn India to Vedanta Group for $4.48 billion. According to various reports, big business groups such as AV Birla, JSW Group, and Adani Group are in the fray to acquire Holcim's assets in India.
UK's Cairn Energy Plc has won an arbitration against the Indian government levying Rs 10,247 crore in retrospective taxes, the company said on Wednesday. The three-member tribunal, which also comprised a judge appointed by the Indian government, ruled that India's claim of Rs 10,247 crore in past taxes over a 2006-07 internal reorganisation of Cairn's India business was not a valid demand, sources said. The tribunal asked India to pay the funds withheld along with the interest to the Scottish oil explorer for seizing dividend, tax refund, and sale of shares to partly recover the dues.
The retrospective tax controversy was highlighted by Vodafone, but Cairn Plc's continuing problems point to the impact this law has had on FDI in India's oil and gas sector.
The company faces a potential tax demand.
The Income Tax department, which is probing Cairn Energy plc's transfer of India assets, has asked the UK-based company not to dispose of its 10.3 per cent holding in Cairn India.
Brokerages put sell notice on Vedanta shares over the company's move to buy Volcan Investments' stake in Anglo American via subsidiary Cairn India Holdings, reports Aditi Divekar.
Cairn faces a potential tax demand on an alleged Rs 24,500 crore of capital gains it made when in 2006-07 it transfered all its India assets to a new company, Cairn India.
Cairn Energy Plc, which has 50 production blocks across the world, holds 10% in Cairn India.
Anil Agarwal, chairman of the Vedanta group, has not started the New Year on a good note.
Faced with prospect of its assets across the globe being seized just like Pakistan and Venezuela, the government decided to scrap retrospective taxation but the international embarrassment could have been avoided had 'attached' shares of Britain's Cairn Energy Plc not been sold, according to tax and legal experts. On Thursday, the government introduced a Bill in Parliament to scrap the tax rule that gave the tax department power to go 50 years back and slap capital gains levies wherever ownership had changed hands overseas but business assets were in India. The 2012 legislation was used to levy a cumulative of Rs 1.10 lakh crore of tax on 17 entities, including UK telecom giant Vodafone, but substantial punitive action was taken only in the case of Cairn.
While Vedanta Aluminium, Balco and Cairn India confirmed the job cuts, sources said Sesa Goa too had slashed jobs.
The company has not been able to sell its 9.8% stake in Cairn India
It is the second firm to have received retrospective tax notice this year after Vodafone Group.
India is in the process of filing an appeal against an arbitration panel asking it to return $1.2 billion to British oil firm Cairn Energy Plc, sources said on Wednesday. If enforcement proceedings are initiated, India is confident to address them and will strongly defend its interests, the sources said, adding it is open to a constructive settlement of tax disputes within the existing legal framework. India is in the process of filing an appeal in the Cairn's arbitration award case, they said, adding in this case, it was well within India's sovereign powers to redress the situation of Double Non-Taxation and tax abuse. Cairn chief executive Simon Thomson had last month met the then finance secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey to discuss the arbitration award.
Cairn files notice against India in $1.6 billion tax dispute.
Cairn India on Friday said its UK-based parent Cairn Energy Plc is unlikely to exit completely from the company.
The UK-based Cairn Energy on Monday said it will sell 51 per cent stake in its Indian unit to mining firm Vedanta Resources Plc for $8.48 billion.
Cairn said it had initiated arbitration.
Interest from Malaysia's Petronas in Cairn India and Swiss Petroplus in Cairn India's parent, Cairn Energy, saw the shares of both the companies gaining on the bourses.
The company management remained tight-lipped about the resignations, but indicated there was nothing unusual in these movements.
Billionaire Gautam Adani on Sunday won the race to acquire Swiss cement major Holcim's stake in Ambuja Cements and its subsidiary ACC for $10.5 bn (around Rs 81,361 crore), including the open offers. The Adani family, through an offshore special-purpose vehicle, announced that it had entered into definitive agreements for the acquisition of Holcim Ltd's entire stake in two of India's leading cement companies -- Ambuja Cements and ACC -- the Adani group said in a statement. The group outbid Ultratech and JSW group to enter the cement industry and also emerge as the country's second-largest cement manufacturer, with 70 million tonnes of capacity annually.
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The Union government's offer of settling the retrospective taxation case with Cairn Energy may hinge on Vedanta withdrawing the ongoing arbitration from the Singapore Tribunal on the same issue. The government has offered to refund Cairn Energy Rs 7,900 crore that it had collected under the retrospective tax demand on fulfilment of certain conditions, including withdrawal of pending litigation and furnishing of an undertaking to the effect that no claim for cost, damages, interest, etc., would be filed. This condition is also part of the Taxation Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021, passed by Parliament recently.
Cairn India on Wednesday said it will invest about $2 billion in the country over the next one and a half years for developing oil fields and building a pipeline which will deliver oil from Barmer in Rajasthan to the coastal areas of Gujarat.
Analysts refuse to read too much into the early birds numbers.
ONGC to take biggest hit of Rs 4,600 crore, followed by Cairn India and Oil India.
Cairn Energy and Air India have jointly asked a New York federal court to stay further proceedings in the British firm's US lawsuit targeting the airline for enforcement of a $1.2-billion arbitral award. The move follows the government enacting a law to scrap retrospective taxation in the country, which in effect will result in withdrawal of the Rs 10,247 crore tax demand on Cairn, according to court documents reviewed by PTI. The British company had won an international arbitration award against levy of such taxes and sought to take over Air India assets when the government refused to honour the award and pay it $1.2 billion-plus interest and penalty.
Cairn Energy of UK is seeking compensation from the Government of India.
Britain's Cairn Energy Plc has dropped lawsuits against the Indian government and its entities in the US and other places and is in the final stages of withdrawing cases in Paris and the Netherlands to get back about Rs 7,900 crore that were collected from it to enforce a retrospective tax demand. As part of the settlement reached with the government to the seven-year old dispute over levy of back taxes, the company - which is now known as Capricorn Energy PLC - has initiated proceedings to withdraw lawsuits it had filed in several jurisdictions to enforce an international arbitration award which had overturned levy of Rs 10,247 crore retrospective taxes and ordered India to refund the money already collected. Two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said Cairn on November 26 withdrew the lawsuit it had brought in Mauritius for recognition of the arbitration award and took similar measures in courts in Singapore, the UK and Canada.
The board of Cairn India has on two occasions rejected oil ministry conditions that royalties paid by Oil and Natural Gas Corporation on its all important Rajasthan oilfields, be cost recoverable from oil sales saying this was against contractual provisions and not in the interest of the company and its shareholders.
The levy of retrospective tax on the UK's Cairn Energy Plc is a tale of bizarre twists and turns that saw its attached shares being sold in May 2018 amid the passing of the baton from a full-time finance minister to interim one and the talks at the highest level to resolve the dispute, to claims that levy of back taxes was a result of an investigation into Panama Papers leak. The government late last month refunded about Rs 7,900 crore it had collected from selling residual shares of the British firm in its erstwhile India unit, seizing dividend and withholding tax refunds, to settle an eight-year-old dispute that had tarred the country's reputation as an investment destination. But, this did not come about easily. For seven years, the establishment vehemently justified in courts and outside seeking of Rs 10,247 crore in back taxes plus interest and penalty from a firm that gave India its biggest onshore oil discovery.
Government wants Cairn India to agree to pay royalty and cess on its all important Rajasthan block.
On November 23, Cairn India, made conditional applications, which have come in for questioning following a Delhi high court ruling.
The government will reserve the right to decide on the cost recoverability of royalty from Cairn India's block in Barmer while clearing Cairn Energy's sale of its Indian subsidiary to Vedanta Resources.
The board of Cairn India is opposed to accepting riders like sharing of royalty and payment of cess on the Rajasthan crude for getting government approval for its parent Cairn Energy's sale of a controlling stake in the company to mining group Vedanta Resources.
ONGC's return on investment becomes positive after govt makes Barmer block royalty cost-recoverable.
The Petroleum Ministry may have watered down its preconditions for approving mining group Vedanta Resources' acquisition of Cairn India, but the $9.6 billion deal will still hinges on no-objection from partner ONGC.
Cairn India produces 125,000 barrels of crude oil per day (6.25 million tonnes a year) from Mangala oilfield, the largest among the 15 discoveries in the Rajasthan block RJ-ON-90/1.
It is not clear what will happen if the open offer is completed before the government approves the deal.
Cairn India, whose success in Rajasthan may have propelled Reliance to bid for two blocks in the state, has submitted offers for only two blocks -- one onland and one offshore.
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