Former Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas partner Nikhil Naredi, who resigned around April 2017, will join Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas soon, according to several authoritative sources, although nothing has been signed yet pending expiry of Naredi’s near-six months of gardening leave from his former firm to date.

The capital markets partner would boost the capital markets practice in Shardul Amarchand’s Mumbai office, where only partner Monal Mukherjee had been specialising in the vertical after having moved from the firm’s Delhi office in 2015.

Clarification: In April 2017, capital markets partner Kaushik Mukherjee had also joined the Mumbai office as part of the mass-move from BMR Legal headed by Amit Khansaheb.

We had reported in June that Naredi was leaving Cyril Amarchand for personal reasons.

Naredi is a 2004 NLSIU Bangalore graduate and holds a 2012 LLM from Columbia Law School.

He had begun his career at erstwhile Amarchand Mangaldas, moving to Jones Day in 2009.

We have reached out to Naredi, Cyril Amarchand and Shardul Amarchand for the past two weeks but have received no comment.

There have been a small handful of partner moves between the two sides of the now estranged Amarchand Mangaldas empire.

Most recently, Shardul Amarchand partner Gaurav Singhi joined Cyril Amarchand in May 2017.

In October 2016, Cyril Amarchand’s Chennai partner Dorothy Thomas joined the elder Shroff brother's firm.

In July 2016, Shardul Delhi partner Asim Abbas joined Cyril's local office.

Update 18:32: Shardul Amarchand has sent a press release confirming Naredi's joining, with the following quotes:

Executive chairman Shardul Shroff said: “We are very excited about Nikhil joining the Firm. With his vast experience of over 13 years on a variety of securities offerings in India and abroad, his presence expands and strengthens the reach of our capital markets practice. With his addition, the Firm has 103 Partners across India.”

Mumbai managing partner Akshay Chudasama added: “He is a vital addition to the team and will help us further strengthen our relationship with our clients. He has considerable expertise on capital markets deals.”

Delhi-based national practice head, capital markets, Prashant Gupta, said: “Nikhil is a great lawyer and adds depth to our capital markets practice in Mumbai. We believe his addition makes us the best rounded practise across Delhi and Mumbai, with seven capital markets partners advising on equity and debt transactions.”

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