Luthra & Luthra has hired its first full-time M&A corporate partner in Mumbai, taking former Clifford Chance senior associate and Trilegal partner Sudipta Routh to diversify the office from its current finance focus.

For the past year Routh (pictured) had worked as an independent legal consultant in London after leaving Clifford Chance's London leveraged finance and India practice where he was a senior associate for around two-and-a-half years.

Routh said: "Luthra have a very strong capital markets and banking and finance practice [in Mumbai] already… Corporate, M&A and private equity I will take up and if there is a finance deal with an international aspect I will throw my weight behind it as well."

"And one day when acquisition finance is actually allowed with foreign participation, which may be in 100 years," he joked, "I intend to be around for that too."

Routh joined Luthra & Luthra's Mumbai corporate team two days ago, which to date consisted solely of group head and former ICICI in-house counsel Bikash Jhawar.

Luthra & Luthra has started interviewing for corporate associate hires in Mumbai to expand significantly, aiming for a headcount of around 10, said Routh.

Routh graduated from NLS Bangalore in 1996 and joined Trilegal in 2001, becoming corporate and M&A partner around two years later. In 2005 he relocated to study banking and finance law at Queen Mary University of London, joining Clifford Chance in November 2006.

He said that he left Clifford Chance in May 2009 after the financial crisis hit, as he did not expect a recovery in the leveraged finance market. "September 2008 was the turning point," he noted. "That point of inflection was permanent."

During his time at Clifford Chance Routh explained that he had also assisted the Bank of England on the British government's rescue of stricken UK high street bank and mortgage lender Northern Rock, which was the UK's first high-profile casualty of the credit crunch in late 2007.

After leaving Clifford Chance he worked part-time as an independent legal consultant for almost a year, capitalising on relationships and "goodwill [he] had left behind in India", he said, doing work such as contract, investment and general advice focusing on eccentricities of the UK and Indian legal system. "It kept me going, paid a little more than my rent and did help me take some exotic vacations," he mused.

Luthra & Luthra has been pushing heavily to scale up its Mumbai office, most recently relocating Delhi partner Aniket Sengupta in February.

Senior partner Mohit Saraf said that the office currently had 25 lawyers, which would grow with junior hires to 32 to 33 by June or July. 

"We are now four Mumbai based partners and two managing associates who too are senior lawyers. These six senior Mumbai based lawyers also take a very active role in the management of our Bombay office which is very exciting for me... We are regularly evaluating candidates and hope to double our size in next 12 months. Our endeavour is to make Mumbai office a full service office in next year or so."