Legal pros may soon work in UK

NEW DELHI: Legal and accounting professionals in India can look forward to practising in the UK in return for ceding some ground to British professionals here. Also, talks to lower the entry barriers for UK’s legal and financial services to India is set to go in full swing.

Discussions between India and UK towards a bilateral trade deal on legal and financial services have gathered momentum with both the countries setting up a framework to remove all the speed breakers that UK firms encounter here.

The ministry of corporate affairs and its UK counterpart have set up a ‘UK-India corporate task force’, which expands the scope of talks under the joint economic and trade co-operation (JETCO) framework existing under the union commerce ministry. The eventual agreement between the nations would cover services of banking, insurance, pension, legal and accounting services.
Some British insurance companies like Norwich Union (Aviva) and Prudential have joint ventures with Indian Insurance firms.

According to the government, 60% of India’s investments in Europe are directed towards UK and British companies exported roughly £812 million worth of services to India in the year 2004.

The task force would discuss issues of company law, accounting and auditing, company secretaryship, corporate governance, investor protection and competition.
Corporate affairs minister Prem Chand Gupta, who met a visiting delegation of 14 experts and policy makers from UK led by lord mayor of London Alderman John Stuttard on Monday, told them that any opening up of these sectors would be on a reciprocal basis.

The planned negotiation is an outcome of Mr Gupta’s talks with his British counterpart Ms Margaret Hodge in January this year during a visit. The minister had also agreed to UK’s reporting and corporate governance regulator the Financial Reporting Council to have regular dialogue on greater co-operation.

“While UK would want the curbs on repatriation of dividend to be removed, Indian professionals would want visa restrictions to go”, said a member of the existing India-UK accountancy task force. UK, has in fact, informed the corporate affairs ministry that it has problems with the ban on UK professionals using the name of their parent professional institute here and with the cap on the number of statutory audit clients. Using the name of their own parent institute would give them a premium in the accounting and auditing market.