The Bharat Aluminium (BALCO) head of legal and compliance Pankaj Kapoor joined Sembcorp Energy India as vice president legal in Hyderabad, according to authoritative sources.

A Delhi University 1999 alumnus, Kapoor now heads both the thermal energy and renewable energy divisions in India, of Sembcorp which is a global energy, water, marine and urban development group and is in the energy space in India.

Kapoor’s in house legal career spans companies such as Hotel Le Meridien, Ansal Housing & Construction, DLF Home Developers and Bharti Infratel before he joined Balco in November 2015 and stayed there for two years until joining Sembcorp where he heads a legal function of five lawyers.

Before Kapoor, Sembcorp’s thermal energy group and its renewable energy group had separate legal functions with the renewable energy group headed by Praveen Singh and the thermal energy group’s legal function headed by company secretary Narendra Rane. Singh has since left the company while Rane continues heading the secretarial function.

The Singapore-based Sembcorp Industries reorganised its India energy operations under the single entity Sembcorp Energy India (SEIL) and brought a majority stake of 93.73% in SEIL under its control in February of this year, as reported by Business Standard.

In India, Sembcorp has two thermal power plants and renewable energy assets totalling over 3800MW, around 4.37 gigawatts of thermal and renewable power capacity in operation and under development and SEIL has two supercritical thermal power plants in Andhra Pradesh and renewable energy assets across seven states in India held through its wholly-owned Sembcorp Green Infra.

The over 50-year-old Balco, India’s first aluminium producer and formerly a public sector undertaking which is now a part of the Vedanta group since 2001, has not yet filled the vacancy created by Kapoor’s exit as chief legal officer.