Marico’s head legal Surender Sharma has joined Colgate Palmolive India as associate director legal.

A Delhi University 1999 alumnus, Sharma was head legal at Marico since he joined the company in November 2013, but since April 2016 he was also head legal for international business, as well as the company secretary for Marico.

He first joined Marico in 2001 as manager legal and secretarial and left it in 2005 for stints at Reckitt Benckiser, the Indian Hotels Company and Heinz India. He left Heinz as head legal in October 2013 to join Marico again, as the FMCG major's head of legal.

He will be reporting to Mumbai-based legal director India Femi Giwa, who had joined in 2014 from Cravath Swaine & Moore in New York, where he was an associate. Giwa was promoted to legal director India in January 2017.

We have reached out to Sharma for comment.

The maker of Parachute and Saffola consumer oils, Marico suffered a sharp volume decline earlier this year as an adverse impact of the GST implementation, as The Hindu Businessline had reported.

Market leader in the toothpaste segment, Colgate Palmolive India was also hit by the GST's impact of market share decline over successive quarters, as has been reported by Mint.