Amarchand Mangaldas has replaced its departing Hyderabad head by internally promoting local principal associate Anshuman Jaiswal, and bulked up the Kolkata office by re-hiring Siddhartha Dutta from Luhtra & Luthra.

Dutta, who originally had started his career in 2000 at Amarchand Delhi’s litigation practice but later moved to Luthra & Luthra, has now rejoined Amarchand in its Kolkata office as a resident partner.

“Siddhartha is a very good guy and we are sorry to lose him,” commented Luthra & Luthra managing partner Rajiv Luthra, but added that due to family reasons he needed to shift to Kolkata. This was “probably the best thing to happen”, he said, because Luthra did not have an office in Kolkata, having closed its outpost there in the 1990s.

Dutta took a career break in 2007 to complete his LLM at the London School of Economic (LSE) and focuses on litigation and arbitration. He would play a “key role in growing Amarchand’s Kolkata office”, stated the press release.

Legally India reported last week that Amarchand Kolkata senior associate Soorjya Ganguli and one associate had joined Argus Partners to start up a litigation team.

Hyderabad

Jaiswal, who was a principal associate, will be the resident partner heading up the Hyderabad office, following the office’s lead partner Kartik Mahalingam having resigned to join the Omidyar Fund.

Jaiswal told Legally India: “It's a challenging market, yes, but given the brand and expertise within the firm, we are quite optimistic and will look at things slightly differently now.”

Having graduated from Nalsar Hyderabad’s first batch in 2003 and joining Amarchand’s Mumbai office, he moved to Hyderabad in December 2005. He specialises in capital markets and general corporate, according to a press release from the firm.