Parliamentary Panel Suggests Lowering Minimum Director Age to 18

A parliamentary panel suggests lowering the minimum director age to eighteen years.

NEW DELHI: The joint committee of Parliamentary panel examining the amendments to the Companies Act has recommended reducing the minimum age for appointment as managing director and whole-time director from 21 years to 18, bringing it in line with similar age caps in the US, Singapore, Germany and Australia.

It has also backed raising the maximum age from 70 years to 75, without the requirement of a special resolution.

“During the deliberations, a general consensus within the committee arose as to lowering of the minimum age from 21 to 18 years. The ministry (of corporate affairs) has informed that similar suggestions were received from HLC-Niti Aayog in order to encourage and increase the representation of young people on boards...,” the panel chaired by Sudheer Gupta said in the report tabled in Parliament.

While supporting further decriminalisation of the law, the committee also recommended dropping some of the proposals that are part of the bill such as doing away with one of the proposals related to NFRA and instead providing a penalty. The panel backed creating special NCLT benches for specific cases.

“Dedicated benches focused solely on insolvency matters would guarantee strict adherence to statutory resolution timelines, which would significantly help to avoid value erosion of distressed assets in IBC cases. Simultaneously, this would insulate regular benches from unplanned procedural urgencies, thereby enabling them to devote focused attention to routine corporate reorganisations, mergers, and conversions in a predictable and time-bound manner,” it said.

Besides, the committee has recommended retaining the Rs 10 crore net profit threshold for CSR applicability, while allowing in-kind contributions for small companies, maintaining a negative list of ineligible agencies, and keeping exemption powers strictly with Parliament, instead of delegating it to the executive.

In its over 1,100-page report, the panel proposed insertion of a new chapter to enable “seamless re-domiciliation of foreign companies to IFSC, without requiring winding-up in their home jurisdiction”. It said a significant number of Indian promoters with offshore operations want to return to Indian shores.

“In order to facilitate the reverse-flipping and shifting of foreign subsidiaries of Indian companies back to India, the committee feels that an enabling legal framework including provisions relating to taxation, capital gains, stamp duty, transfer and vesting of assets and liabilities, filing and compliance requirements, continuation of rights and obligations, and other consequential or incidental matters arising from such re-domiciliation, is essential for seamless migration,” the report said.