Kavitha Gupta's blog

  Contracting for ERP Implementation Success 20 November 2014 Mayer Brown Newsletter Stories of ERP implementation disasters are numerous and stunning in scale and frequency. These failures are so common that reading the literature on the subject leads to the conclusion that successes are in the small minority. In fact, one recent study estimated that only 6.4% of ERP projects are completed on time and within budget. 1 The reported costs of abandoned projects can be enormous—$125 million in the case of Avon. But the costs of an improperly implemented system are equally high. Hershey and Nike each reported $100 million in lost sales and significant drops in stock price due to problems in their new ERP systems. 2 While many of the risks in an ERP implementation project are beyond the control of the lawyers supporting the project, understanding why these projects often fail and what success looks like will help you guide your business clients to a contract structur...

Foreign Trade Policy 2015 - 2020 Khaitan & Co The Government of India has released the Foreign Trade Policy (Policy) for the 5 year period between 2015 and 2020 on 1 April 2015. The Policy is aimed simplifying the procedure for doing business in India and facilitating import into and export out of India. The export promotion schemes have been simplified and export obligations against duty free import has been reduced by 25% to promote the “Make in India” initiative of the Government of India. A reconciliatory dispute resolution process has also been introduced to amicably settle disputes between importers and exporters in a time bound manner relating to quality complaints and trade disputes on commercial dealings.  The central theme of the Policy is to make India a significant player in world trade by the year 2020. The Policy, together with the proposed introduction of the goods and service tax in 2016, is expected to increase the ease of doing business in India and ac...

Big Data and Human Resources—Letting the Computer Decide? By Susan McLean , Caroline Stakim , Hanno Timner and Christine E. Lyon on April 3rd, 2015 Posted in Employment Law Employees are a company’s greatest asset, but if the company gets hiring decisions wrong, employees could also be the company’s greatest expense. Accordingly, recruiting the right people and retaining and promoting the best, while identifying and addressing under-achievers, is critical. Many organizations spend a lot of time and effort on human resources issues but do not have sufficiently detailed data to help them fully understand their employees and the challenges that can affect workforce planning, development and productivity. Big data analytics can help to address these challenges, which explains why more and more HR departments are turning to them for a variety of purposes, for example, to: (i) identify potential recruits; (ii) measure costs per hire and return on investment; (iii) ...

When do white collar criminal statutes apply to extraterritorial conduct? Contributed by Hogan Lovells US LLP April 07 2015 Introduction Broad reach of US criminal statutes Supreme Court presumption against extraterritoriality Presumption against extraterritoriality and criminal statutes Applying Morrison / Vilar test Comment Introduction In the past five years the Supreme Court has steadily restricted the recovery available to civil litigants seeking relief for conduct that occurred outside the United States. At the same time, prosecutors have continued to push for the broad application of criminal laws to extraterritorial conduct, particularly in white collar criminal cases. Courts have only just begun to grapple with the question of how to analyse whether a criminal statute applies extraterritorially. The results thus far have been inconsistent and have confused the analysis of when a foreign company or executive is subject to US criminal jurisdiction. ...

Contract Corner: Limitations of Liability—Exceptions and Caps By  Michael Pillion  and  A. Benjamin Klaber  // March 16, 2015 We recently discussed the  enforceability  and  exclusion  of different types of damages in contractual limitation-of-liability provisions. In this Contract Corner post, we focus on caps on liability and exceptions to such limitations of liability. Do contracts typically include an upper limit (or cap) on liability? Parties commonly negotiate for an aggregate upper limit on liability for direct damages that arise out of their contracts to get comfort and certainty with the potential risk of the transaction relative to the expected commercial benefits. This cap on liability can be a specific dollar amount, but many contracts tie the cap in some way to amounts paid for products or services. The latter approach automatically provides flexibility and proportionality, in case the commercial relationship significa...

Published date:  30 Mar 2015 Singapore High Court upholds non-compete clause in employment contract of former broker Phua Woon Mahina v GFI Group Pte Ltd  Originating Summons No. 4 of 2015   On 5 February 2015, the Singapore High Court upheld a non-compete clause in the employment contract between a leading inter-dealer broker, GFI Singapore, and one of its employees.   The court presided by Woo Bih Li J found that the non-compete clause was no wider than reasonably necessary for the protection of GFI Singapore’s legitimate interests.   Background   The plaintiff was a senior broker with the defendant, GFI Singapore. GFI Singapore is the Singapore office of the GFI Group, a global interdealer brokerage firm headquartered in New York.   The plaintiff’s employment contract with GFI Singapore contained a non-compete clause which prohibited her from working for a competitor and from soliciting any of GFI Singapore’s clients for...