HSA Advocates has hired Pinsent Masons Singapore senior associate Ajoy Halder as a partner, to start on 1 August.

The 2004 NLSIU Bangalore graduate began his career at Lexadigm in Gurgaon, moved to Amarchand Mangaldas Delhi, as it then was, in 2007, followed by Trilegal Delhi in 2010, and DSK Legal in 2011.

Between 2011 and now he has been at Pinsent Masons in Singapore, where he focused on project development, project finance, construction and M&A

HSA founding partner Hemant Sahai said that Halder was also a projects M&A lawyer, which would add to the M&A side of the projects practice at the firm that had already been bolstered with Amitabh Sharma’s arrival from Khaitan & Co as managing partner.

Halder “already has some deep relationships in South East Asia”, added Sahai, which “would be a perfect fit for us, not just to add strength to our infra practice but as a result of this we will also see some [greater] geographical spread”.

The firm would therefore be bidding on more projects in South East Asia, also in collaboration with local firms.

Growth: Projects doubling revenue

With Halder, HSA has already hired seven partners this year, growing to 25 partners in total, after Bharat Sharma joined from Naik & Naik & Co in corporate, Sharath Chandrasekhar joined in Bangalore, and Aninda Pal from Juris Corp in Mumbai.

“From outside it might look dangerous that hiring spree without looking at revenues,” acknowledged Sahai, “but when we’re looking at our topline [revenue], we may even double our topline, with the cost not increasing significantly.”

“My forecast for next year is that generally the market is poised to do better, while the overall legal market may not grow that aggressively to numbers we could have expected seven or eight years ago, but we will see growth,” he predicted.

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