Four senior counsel and Naik in SLP against immovable property rental service tax; AZB Bangalore Muthoot debentures; Universal-Wadia Ghandy Pizza Hut deal; Infrastructure India windfarm buy with 3 foreign firms and KhaiCo, MMB; ANM for Godrej in cyber squatter; Rs 200 crore P&A Kemrock buy; Amarchand Essar delisting.

Litigation

After losing the immovable property rentals’ service tax matter in the Bombay High Court in August 2011, Naik Naik & Co’s special leave petition (SLP) on behalf of the Retailers Association of India (RAI) was listed by the Supreme Court of India on Wednesday (28 September), with the apex court granting an extension on the stay of collection and recovery of service tax arrears until 14 October 2011, pending the disposal of the SLP. The RAI was represented by four senior counsel Harish Salve, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Mukul Rohatgi and Ganesh Prasad alongside Naik managing partner Ameet Naik.

Debt capital markets

AZB & Partners Bangalore partner Srinath Dasari advised Muthoot Finance on its public issue of secured, non-convertible debentures with a total value of Rs 690 crore ($140m) with a raft of banks acting as lead managers. The prospectus was filed on 11 August 2011.

M&A

Universal Legal attorney Kavitha Vijay advised Hansa Zone in its outright purchase the Chennai, Coimbatore and Pondicherry licensee of the Pizza Hut brand, Pizzeria Fast Foods Restaurants, which is a franchisee of Yum Restaurants (India). Wadia Ghandy’s Djena Sunavala represented the seller group.

P&A Law Offices partner Anand Pathak and associates Sushmit Mishra, Abhishek Dubey and Anurag Pareek were sole advisor to speciality chemicals maker RPM International in its purchase of a 20 per cent stake in Kemrock Industries for Rs 201.5 crore. [ET]

Khaitan & Co partner Upendra Joshi with Covington Burling London partner Simon Amies and associates Brett Hopcroft and Alexandra Smith advised wind farm operator Indian Energy on its £7.9m takeover by London Alternative Investment Market-listed (AIM) Infrastructure India, which was represented by MMB Legal partner Talha Salaria in India and Taylor Wessing’s London partner Tandeep Minhas, senior associate Edward Hooper and associate Katie Bennett. Carey Olson senior associate Tony Lane led for Indian Energy from Guernsey where the court approved the scheme of arrangement. [VCCircle]

FoxMandal Chennai partner Jeevanandham Rajagopal and associate Vidya Sunderam advised LBR Hotels and Hospitality Services, which is an affiliate of the UK-based Lebara Group, which bought a Chennai hotel for Rs 110 crore, which would be managed by Taj Hotels brand holders Indian Hotels Company [ET]

Intellectual property

ANM Global co-founding partners Nidhish Mehrotra and Rodney Ryder won for Godrej Consumer Products against a domain name cybersquatter who had registered godrej.biz. Godrej Industries vice-president legal Rajiv Bakshi and deputy general manager legal Mandhar Chandrachud headed up the in-house legal team in winning a favourable order from the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). [ET]

Delisting

Amarchand Mangaldas Mumbai managing partner Cyril Shroff is advising Essar Capital on its delisting of India Securities by December 2012 together with Edelweiss [ET]

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