Corporate Communications and Indian Competition Law: Do Not Speak More than You Can Handle

This article will analyse the issue of how Indian companies need to manage their corporate communications, now that the country’s competition laws are in effect. Companies in order to effectively manage their business(es) need to communicate with investors, shareholders, internal managers, competitors, etc., but the contents of such communication should be carefully scrutinized from a competition law perspective. Contents of a company’s public document or the internal rules of an organization have already been relied upon, by India’s new competition law agency, to establish violations of the rules of Indian competition laws. In this era of heightened antitrust scrutiny, companies and their lawyers need to understand the appropriateness and correctness of particular corporate disclosures vis-a-vis potential competition law litigation risks. I have discussed these issues in greater detail, analyzing: trends of corporate disclosures, contents of organizational documents and manner and mode of information exchange between companies in India. I have attempted to provide guidance on how Indian companies and their lawyers need to manage corporate communications from a competition law standpoint.