Law firms

Fox Mandal advised state-owned power financer Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) in extending Rs 8,775 crore ($1.6bn) to the NTPC and Bihar State Electricity Board (BSEB) joint venture Nabhinagar Super Thermal Power Project.

Fox Mandal Delhi banking and finance partner Rajesh Sehgal with senior associate Rahul Tyagi and associate Bhupendra Verma acted for REC. NTPC and BSEB were advised in-house.

Majmudar & Partners and US law firm Kim Law Advisors advised San Francisco’s Burill & Company in its Rs 54 crore ($10m) primary and secondary investment in the Trilegal-advised Bangalore-based Strand Life Sciences, including buying out its lead investors WestBridge Capital and Ascent Capital. WestBridge was advised by AZB & Partners.

Majmudar Bangalore partner N Raja Sujith acted for Burill which is a diversified global financial services firm focussed on the life sciences sector.

Trilegal Bangalore partner Kosturi Ghosh acted for Strand in what Biospectrum Asia reported was a series B financing by Burill.

AZB & Partners Bangalore partner Srinath Dasari acted for WestBridge – a series A lead investor in Strand, which according to Startup Central had picked up a 20 per cent stake in the company for a reported $1.9m in 2002.

AZB & Partners advised India-focused infrastructure fund Macquarie SBI in its Rs 206 crore ($40m) buy of 74 per cent equity in the GMR group’s road project GMR Jadcherla Expressways (GJEL). GMR was advised by Link Legal.

AZB & Partners Mumbai co-founding partner Bahram Vakil, with senior associate Qais Jamal, acted for Macquarie SBI, which expanded its road portfolio. Macquarie SBI had two years ago invested in GMR infrastructure’s airport subsidiary, as reported in Mint at the time.

Link Legal Delhi corporate partner Anand Srivastava and senior associate Milind Jha acted for the GMR group, which is operating the Farukhnagar-Jadcherla highway in Andhra Pradesh under a concession agreement signed with the National Highway Authority of India, according to a GMR press release.

Ten foreign law firms will now be allowed to practice local law in Singapore, after the country’s law ministry approved four new Qualified Foreign Law Practice (QFLP) licences out of 23 total applicants.

Exclusive: Former Tatva Legal Bangalore co-founding partner Manoj Menon has joined Dua Associates as an equity partner in Bangalore to head the firm’s private equity and M&A practice, three years after he left as a salaried partner at the firm to Tatva.

The daughter of Amarchand Mangaldas Mumbai managing partner Cyril Shroff, Paridhi Shroff, has married Karan Adani, the son of prominent Gujarat industrialist Gautam Adani, founder of the Adani Group.

The Economic Times featured a 31-photo-slideshow of the 11-13 February Goa wedding, reporting the attendance of Reliance industrialists Anil and Mukesh Ambani and their mother Kokilaben Ambani; Vedanta group’s founder and executive chairman Anil Agarwal; Kotak Mahindra Bank promoter; vice-chairman and managing director Uday Kotak, Essar Group vice-chairman Shashi Ruia; Kingfisher group founder Vijay Mallya; ICICI bank non-executive chairman KV Kamath; Enam financial chairman Vallabh Bansali; Mahindra Group chairman Anand Mahindra.

The Telegraph India speculated that the presence of so many industrialists at the wedding was reportedly the cause for the postponement of Mamata Bannerjee’s Mumbai roadshow.

The Times of India also reported that BJP leader LK Advani, Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, “senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad, Morari Bapu, Parimal Nathwani, Keshubhai Patel, Sudhir Nanavati, Girish Dani, Jaxay Shah and Kartikeya Sarabhai” were present, while Daily Bhaskar featured more than 30 wedding photos.

A large number of partners from international law firms are understood to have attended the ceremony.

The Ahmedabad-headquartered Adani conglomerate is a long-standing client of Amarchand, with the firm having advised on Adani Power’s record initial public offering (IPO) in 2009. In early 2012 Amarchand had also set up an office in Ahmedabad.

Exclusive: Nishith Desai Associates (NDA) has appointed Matthew Nimetz – US diplomat and former chair of US law firm Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison – to its internal board of trusted advisors (BOTA) that meets up to three times yearly to decide on firm strategy.

Khaitan & Co advised the British ITE group’s Cyprus-based subsidiary Airgate in its Rs 122 crore (£14m) buy of a 28.3 per cent stake in event management company Asian Business Exhibition and Conferences (ABEC), which was advised by AZB & Partners.

Khaitan & Co Delhi corporate partner Bharat Anand and direct tax executive director Daksha Baxi acted for Airgate, which bought the stake from Qatar’s investment bank Qinvest.

AZB & Partners Mumbai partner Shameek Chaudhuri acted for ABEC which runs 19 exhibitions across 11 vertical markets including construction, architecture, design, education, lifestyle, real estate, and oil & gas.

IndusLaw’s Hyderabad office advised Kaizen Private Equity, which with German publishing giant Bertelsmann invested $4m (Rs 22 crore) in AuthorGen Technologies, that was advised by Dua Associates in Mumbai.

AuthorGen’s majority shareholder Educomp, which will become a minority shareholder after the sale, was represented by Amarchand Mangaldas Delhi partner Kalpataru Tripathy and senior associate Promode Murugavelu.

Dua Mumbai partner Vinod Joseph, senior associate Sugandha Kamal and associate Dhrupad Vaghani assisted AuthorGen and its founder Harman Singh.

IndusLaw Hyderabad partner Satya Sree Akella and associates Basava Rao and Kaustuv Banerjee acted for Kaizen.

AuthorGen is involved in providing online classes to teachers with its flagship product WizIQ, reported Mint.

AZB & Partners advised business process outsourcing firm Genpact in its buy of India-based healthcare payer industry service provider Felix Software Solutions, which was advised by US attorney Cyrus Kashef.

AZB & Partners Delhi partner Vinati Kastia with senior associates Bharat Bahadur and Daksh Trivedi acted for Felix. Felix was bought by Genpact as part of its purchase of the US-based Jawood, which had sub-contracted Felix, according to the Financial Express.

The healthcare payer industry is seeing enormous growth due to regulatory changes, including creation of health insurance exchanges, and the development of alternative risk and payment models, stated a report in the Economic Times.

Sino-Singaporean joint venture law firm Dacheng Wong Alliance’s India practice advised on Singaporean e-waste company Enviro-Hub Holdings' (EHH) Rs 110 crore ($20m) sale of its subsidiary to Indian IT company Cerebra Integrated Technologies.

Former Lexygen Singapore partner Yang Yen Thaw alongside fellow Dacheng India co-head and managing principal Aloysius Wee, and senior associate Richa Chaturvedi acted for the Bangalore-based Cerebra, which bought EHH's wholly-owned Singaporean subsidiary Cimelia Resource Recovery.

Consultancy firm Grant Thornton India advised on the financial aspects of the deal. Yang Yen Thaw said no Indian firms acted on the deal.

With this deal Cerebra would become one of the first global Indian multinational companies in the area of electronics and electrical equipment (WEEE) waste, an industry estimated at around $20 billion currently, according to Business Standard.

Alliance Legal co-founder and AZB & Partners alumnus Vishnu Jerome has rebranded his practice to P&C Legal after merging his practice into Bangalore headquartered firm Poovayya & Co.

K Law has hired Anisha Patnaik, who was formerly a director at seed stage investment fund First Light Accelerator as a partner in Mumbai in its funds practice, according to legal website Bar & Bench.

She was previously legal counsel at Acumen Fund, before which she was the first female lawyer to have been promoted at Thakker & Thakker to salaried partnership, as reported by Legally India in 2009.

Thakker & Thakker closed in 2010, with its founder Bijesh Thakker wanting to focus on philanthropic projects.

Khaitan & Co had picked up a number of lawyers from firm after it closed.

Exclusive: Nishith Desai Associates (NDA) senior practice co-heads Siddharth Shah and Bijal Ajinkya will join Khaitan & Co in Mumbai as funds and tax partners respectively in around two weeks.

Alliance Legal co-founding partner and J Sagar Associates (JSA) alumni Priyanka Roy has joined IndusLaw as its second Mumbai equity partner to bolster former ICICI general counsel (GC) Pramod Rao who set up the office in April 2012.

AZB & Partners advised British travel major Thomas Cook’s erstwhile Indian subsidiary in buying a 74 per cent stake in upcoming Indian staffing company Ikya Human Capital Solutions for Rs 256 crore ($47.6m). Ikya was advised by Amarchand Mangaldas.

AZB & Partners Mumbai partner Ashwin Ramanathan with senior associates Nandish Vyas and Bhavi Sanghvi acted for Thomas Cook (India) and Canadian investment company Fairbridge Capital which had acquired the Indian subsidiary from the UK’s Thomas Cook PLC in May last year.

This, according to the Economic Times, was Fairbridge’s first acquisition after the Thomas Cook buy.

Amarchand Mangaldas Bangalore partner Reeba Chacko with principal associate Akshay Bhat acted for Ikya.

The deal marks the complete exit of venture capital fund India Equity Partners from Ikya, reported VCCircle. India Equity Partners had bought a 59 per cent stake in the Bangalore-based staffing firm since 2008.