A handful of cases shape how experienced investors think about India. They are cited often and read rarely, usually as warnings. Read closely, they are something more useful: a short course in what makes a cross-border structure durable, and what no structure can carry.
This series takes four or five landmark matters and reads each the same way. What was built. What happened. Where the exposure actually sat. Whether structuring could have changed the outcome. And the transferable lesson. We state each holding as the court decided it and leave it there; our subject is the structure and the strategy around it, not the merits of the judgment.
The cases divide along one line, and the division is the point. Some outcomes were avoidable — they turned on substance that was thin, a treaty chosen without thought, or reliance on a position the authorities had not accepted. Others were not avoidable by structuring at all, because the risk was sovereign: a change in the law applied to a transaction already closed. Those teach a different discipline — risk allocated by contract, and the investment-treaty backstop — and a larger point worth stating plainly. A jurisdiction is judged less by whether it makes a misstep than by how it corrects one. On that test India reads well, and the cases show why.
Each note links to the synthesis commentary on India's direction of travel, to the structuring pillar, and to the companion legal analysis where the mechanics belong.
The cases in this series
- The Indirect-Transfer Cases: Vodafone, Cairn and the Treaty Backstop — when the risk was sovereign and no structure could carry it, and the investment treaty answered.
- The Substance Arc: Azadi Bachao to Tiger Global — from the certificate that sufficed in 2003 to the substance the Supreme Court required in 2026.
- The Limits of Most-Favoured-Nation: The Nestlé Ruling — why a treaty benefit the authorities have not granted is not yet yours to take.
- Treaty Selection Decides the Outcome: The Sanofi Case — the same indirect-transfer charge as Vodafone, a different treaty, and the opposite result.
This article is general information and not legal or tax advice. Laws and case-law develop; obtain advice on your specific circumstances before acting.