Crawford Bayley promoted senior associate Sumit Vadhavkar to associate partner in its real estate practice, effective from 1 October. Vadhavkar will help the firm deal with increasing mandates in the commercial leasing space.
The 2007 GLC Mumbai alumni, who joined Crawford in March 2005 and has been with the firm throughout his legal career, said he specialises in commercial leasing. The firm’s real estate practice has mandates in commercial leasing, joint ventures, redevelopment of property and the residential space, he said.
He commented: “We are observing increased growth rate in commercial leasing and I specialize in the area. The commercial leasing sector is booming and we have done a lot of work in this sector. For example one of the high end transactions we did recently is in Capital Building [Pfizer’s acquisition of office leasing space at the Wadhwa Group's commercial tower] on the 18th and 19th floor of capital building covering an area of 90,000 square feet.”
“We are also observing pick up in redevelopment sector.”
He said that he hoped that the Make in India campaign would boost Mumbai’s real estate and that he will encourage clients investing in India to set up Mumbai offices. But he was not very optimistic about the residential real estate market from which mandates had dropped recently. He said, growth will remain “sluggish” especially in its luxury segment until developers cut down market prices of properties.
“Right now there has been an interest rate cut by the RBI [Reserve Bank of India] and the government has said that they are not going to interfere with the RBI’s policy. The SBI has reduced their interest rate by 0.4 per cent the benefit of which would go to the purchasers,” he added.
Vadhavkar primarily works with Crawford senior partner RA Shah and partner Sanjay Buch, and also handles corporate advisory work for Indian and foreign clients, the firm said in an email.
Crawford’s Mumbai real estate team has Zarine Talaty as partner and includes four associates, in addition to Vadhavkar. The firm currently has six associate partners and 10 partners.
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It still remains a well regarded firm among clients though.
If you apply that yardstick then Pfizer wouldn't have gone to Veritas Legal for sale of their Thane unit recently!
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