Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas Gurgaon-based partner Sunando Mukherjee will be joining HSA Advocates tomorrow as the latest in a series of aggressive lateral hiring.

Mukherjee, a 2006 Symbiosis Pune graduate, had become a salaried partner at SAM in 2017 (see biography below).

HSA managing partner Hemant Sahai confirmed his joining and commented: “Apart from pureplay corporate M&A, he does a lot of energy-specific M&A. And in that sense he fits in very well with our profile.”

We have reached out to Mukherjee for comment.

Mukherjee had left SAM on 30 December 2019. The firm wished him well when asked for comment.

This latest hire has brought HSA to a similar position, at least in terms of headcounts, before seven of its partners had left for DSK Legal less than a year ago, said Sahai.

Sahai added that further recruitments were currently in the pipeline, and that headcounts would be “exactly back to where we were earlier”.

“We will be 30 partners in the next couple of months,” he added, noting that before the departure of the seven, the firm was at around 28 or 29 partners.

Since April of last year, HSA had hired:

• Faranaaz Karbhari as a counsel in Mumbai,
• Gaurav Sahay as a Bangalore partner from Kochhar & Co,
• independent Dipti Lavya Swain as a partner,
• Geeta Saha as a Mumbai finance partner from GS Associates,
• independent Vatsal Gaur as a partner,
• Amit Charan from SNG & Partners, and
• Ashutosh Gupta from Economic Laws Practice (ELP) as a partner.

In that period, two HSA partners had left: managing partner Amitabh Sharma and shortly after the DSK raid, Nand Kishore had also joined DSK.

We have requested a more detailed breakdown of current headcounts from the firm and will update the story when we receive this.