The facilitation of outbound mergers under the Companies Act and the FEMA Regulations has contributed towards expansion of the scope of cross-border mergers in India. However, as a practical matter, the framework for cross-border mergers in India has largely been utilized only in the context of merger of foreign wholly owned subsidiaries with and into their Indian holding companies or vice versa. This note discusses certain key issues leading to limited efficacy of the cross-border merger framework in India from a regulatory and tax perspective.
