After the $3.8bn blockbuster acquisition of 2018 in which Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) acquired GSK India’s nutrition business, the involved legal teams have seen a major restructuring.
The mammoth acquisition completed on 1 April 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, including law firms Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas and AZB & Partners as well as significant involvement from in-house.
The GSK team, in particular, has now effectively split three-way.
GSK's Baliga moves to Bayer
Devdas Baliga, a 1993 Delhi University LLB graduate and the former GSK Consumer Healthcare India subcontinent legal head (executive vice president legal), has now moved to German multinational pharma giant Bayer, as country group head legal, patents & compliance South Asia.
Baliga is an in-house veteran, with the senior roles at Coca Cola from 2007 until 2017 (see below).
Wadhwa heads up GSK Consumer Health
Baliga’s former role at GSK Consumer Healthcare has now been taken over by his former general manager legal, Kanika Shah Wadhwa, who was also director of one of the GSK entities.
Wadhwa is now heading the legal team of around three as head of legal for the Indian subcontinent, at the post-merger remaining retail vertical of GSK Consumer Healthcare.
Like Baliga, she is also a Delhi University LLB (2005 batch), and has also worked in Coca Cola’s legal team with Baliga from 2008 until 2014, but had moved to InterGlobe Aviation after that until joining GSK in 2018 (see below).
Choudhary Jain joins HUL
However, GSK’s nutrition vertical, which includes iconic brands such as Horlicks, is now part of HUL; that nutrition vertical’s legal team is headed up now by Varsha Choudhary Jain, who was also general manager legal under Baliga at GSK.
Jain’s full title is head legal nutrition, at HUL, where she and her team of three are reporting directly to HUL general counsel (GC) Dev Bajpai, who is one of the few India GCs who is also executive director on the company’s board, since 2017.
Jain is a 1997 Delhi University law grad and the longest stint in her career is her 2008 until 2016 tenure as associate vice president of legal at Amway (see below).
We have reached out to all three for comment but they declined to do so.
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