Linklaters best-friend firm Talwar Thakore & Associates (TTA) has promoted banking and finance managing associate Sonali Mahapatra to its partnership to take its ranks of partners back up to six.
Mahapatra joined TTA in 2009 after a three-year stint with Linklaters and will become a partner effective 1 April. She graduated from NLSIU Bangalore in 2001, beginning her career at Amarchand Mangaldas.
TTA partner Narayan Iyer, who joined the firm in late 2009 from Linklaters Singapore where Mahapatra had been part of his team, said that she had substantial banking and finance experience.
Mahapatra said that as a partner she and Iyer, apart from continuing to work closely with Linklaters and its international clients, would try to strengthen domestic relationships with international bank clients who did work or had branches in India, to advise them on cross-border lending.
She told Legally India that finance work was currently “up and down” but overall going well. “At the beginning of this year there are quite a few people in the market who are looking to raise finance and there are quite a few structured deals. The plain vanilla stuff goes on but there is not that much for lawyers to do there.”
Iyer said that after Mahapatra’s election the firm now had six partners and 16 associates.
This is a leverage of 2.6 associates per partner. Iyer explained that the idea was to eventually get the leverage similar to Linklaters global average leverage levels, which were roughly between 4.5 fee-earners per partner.
Former TTA partner Kiran Khanna, who was promoted in November 2009 as the firm’s sixth partner, has since left the firm for personal reasons following maternity leave.
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This whole "best friends" charade is a joke. Linklaters may as well rename Talwar Thakur to Linklaters India - surely there is no law against indian firms having the same name as a foreign one.
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