Following his resignation from L&L Partners in January, lateral capital markets partner Jitesh Shahani has joined S&R Associates as a partner in Mumbai.

Shahani had moved to L&L in August 2019 as an emergency replacement from Allen & Overy Singapore after the firm’s capital markets team had been decimated by the departure of practice head Manan Lahoty and most of the team to IndusLaw.

The 2005 Nalsar Hyderabad graduate does both debt and equity capital markets, for issuers and investment banks.

He had worked in India - Luthra & Luthra as it then was - until 2010, before heading to Singapore.

Managing partner Rajiv Luthra had declined to comment on Shahani’s departure when it first became public in January.

We have reached out for comment to him and senior partner Mohit Saraf again.

At the time of Shahani’s original hire in 2019, Saraf had said: “We are in the middle of looking at more hires. We are feeling determined to have a strong capital markets in Delhi and Mumbai.”

With Shahani moving to a strong rival in the capital markets space, it is not clear what remains of L&L’s capital markets practice anymore.

In January 2021, the word was that former capital markets partner Geeta Dhania, who was on a sabbatical, would return to the firm.

However, according to her Linked-in profile, she has joined the firm in January as a consultant in TMT (technology, media and telecommunications), not in capital markets.

Update 16:07: Senior partner and co-founding partner Mohit Saraf commented: “I am very sad to see Jitesh leave the Firm. We had great plans for capital markets practice but perhaps Jitesh had to cut short his stay in the Firm on account of internal rift. I wish him all the best and hope to welcome him back soon once these issues are behind us.”