AZB & Partners former Mumbai partner Kalpana Merchant, who resigned from the firm in early September, has joined P&C Legal, the Mumbai arm of Bangalore headquartered firm Poovayya & Co that was started headed by AZB alum Vishnu Jerome.
Jerome commented: “It’s great to welcome Kalpana on board as a senior partner of P&C legal. She brings with her a wealth of experience in the banking and finance and real estate practice. This compliments our core areas both in Mumbai and Bangalore.”
Merchant said: “I have known the P&C Team for many years. I look forward to growing the practice and leveraging our common synergies.”
P&C Legal, which began life as a start-up by senior lawyers from three big firms, Alliance Legal, before joining Poovayya & Co in 2013, is now 10 lawyers strong in Mumbai, said Jerome.
The Mumbai office has five partners, making an unusually low gearing ratio of 1:1, after having recently promoted two former other former AZB lawyers to partnership who returned to P&C Legal after obtaining LLM degrees abroad:
- 2008 NUJS Kolkata graduate Murtaza Somjee, who has an MA from the University of Chicago;
- 2009 NUJS graduate Sameer Sibal, who holds an LLM from Columbia.
A year ago NUJS graduate Shameek Ray was promoted to partner. He practices private equity / venture capital work, debt capital markets and finance and had been at AZB between 2006 and 2011 before joining Jerome in starting Alliance.
Comments
Abhijeet Joshi, Shuva Mandal, Essaji Vahanvati, Kalpana Merchant all have left.....
That would be the equivalent of Ashwath, Vishwanathan and Yash leaving CAM....
Or Akshay, Som and Amit leaving JSA...
What has happened with Zia? Why the exodus? Worth a story, no Kian?
Waiting for LI to print merger market rankings, which bar and bench has already published..