In-house counsel

Deutsche Bank India senior legal counsel Sapna Bhawnani will join Credit Suisse in Mumbai as its joint director and co-head of legal India in the coming months.

Freshly minted Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas partner Himanshu Dodeja will join private equity major Blackstone as its India general counsel (GC).

The ex-general counsel (GC) of UTV-founder Ronnie Screwvala’s fund Unilazer Ventures, Archana Rajaram, left the company to go independent this month, now advising the venture capital funds Unilazer Ventures, IDG Ventures and Matrix Partners and others as an independent general counsel.

IBM Singapore head of legal Kapil Chaudhary joined Autodesk as its India and SAARC general counsel, replacing Mekhla Basu who joined IBM.

Former Hammurabi & Solomon partner Vidya Adsule joined Pune real estate builder Kolte Patil Developers as its group general counsel.

J Sagar Associates (JSA) Mumbai partner Nandini Mehta left the firm to join realty portal Housing.com as its general counsel, reported Money Control and several others further to a company press release.

Flipkart has hired Samsung’s former director and general counsel South and West Asia, Rajinder Sharma, as its group general counsel, while the company has been busy restructuring its operations with its recent buy-back of its logistics operations from WS Retail Services Pvt Ltd as reported by Mint on Tuesday (22 September).

R Sunder Rajan, the former chief of legal at GMR, has joined Bharti Airtel as its group general counsel (GC).

When 28 years after its birth, India’s most-diversified financial institution that’s not a bank, Bajaj Finance, looked inward, it realised it was short of a legal team comparable to the company’s overall size and rate of diversification. The company’s legal department was understaffed: a total of six in-house lawyers present to handle the documentation and litigation arising out of a portfolio of 11 non-banking financing (NBFC) businesses.

Read how the company hired Sapan Gupta from Standard Chartered and began its facelift.

Legal recruiter Vahura said that general counsel (GC) with between 15 to 25 years of experience, working at companies, could earn from Rs 80 lakh to more than Rs 300 lakh per year as a cost-to-company (CTC) package.

Phoenix Legal Mumbai partner Kartikeya Singh is understood to join investment bank Bank of America (BoA) Merrill Lynch in August as its deputy general counsel (GC) India.

Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas partner designate Nidhi Parekh will join Citi India’s legal team as senior vice president.

Khaitan & Co associate partner in the Delhi litigation team, Mohit Abraham, will join taxi aggregator Uber to head up its Indian legal function as its legal director India.

Cipla global general counsel (GC) and former Khaitan & Co partner Murali Neelakantan, has resigned in order to focus on a variety of policy, education and other projects, while also set to become an independent director of a former long-standing client.

Mumbai-based Deutsche Bank general counsel (GC) Atulya Sharma has resigned and might join a “telecom company, possibly Reliance Communications or Tata Teleservices at a 25 per cent wage hike”, reported the Economic Times, citing sources.

The paper wrote that IDFC legal head Rajeev Uberoi was front runner to become Deutsche Bank GC after Sharma’s departure in January.

Reliance Industries (RIL) Exploration & Production head legal, Naveen Raju, has joined Mahindra & Mahindra as its new group general counsel (GC).