In a "shotgun wedding ", the long term ramifications of which were somewhat drowned amidst the Diwali break last week, the Union Government has ordered the forced merger of two private sector companies in "public interest": National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL) with its publicly traded parent company - Financial Technologies (FTIL) . Creditably, Mint had front paged a well argued opinion piece (by Mobis Philipose) titled "Order violates fundamental principles of rule of law". Extracts (emphasis mine): Here’s the main problem: the government is forcing a parent company to take on the liability of a subsidiary company, ignoring the fact the subsidiary was formed as a separate entity precisely so that the parent company’s liability is limited to the extent of its investment in the firm . ... who’s to say that the dues of investors in NSEL’s products serve a greater public interest than the interests of FTIL’s minority shareholders? An argument i...