Bharti Airtel
Bharti Airtel director legal Sameer Chugh has been promoted to group general counsel at the Bharti Group, as first reported by Legal Era.
Bharti Axa Life Insurance vice president and head legal Sachin Kalra joined HT Media on 4 September as the media company’s second deputy general counsel.
Mukesh Bhavnani has returned to be group general counsel (GC) at Bharti Enterprises after a year of stints as Vedanta's GC and some time out.
R Sunder Rajan, the former chief of legal at GMR, has joined Bharti Airtel as its group general counsel (GC).
Allen & Overy (A&O) and Indian best friend firm Trilegal have scooped the mandated lead arranger mandate on the closing Bharti Airtel – Zain $9bn merger, alongside AZB & Partners, Herbert Smith and Linklaters.
Confounding expectations Press Notes 2 and 4 will stay as they are, according to a press report this morning. Perhaps a few lawyers will not have been surprised, however.
"There is no plan to make any changes in Press Note 2 and 4 at all," an unnamed "senior finance ministry official" told the Indian daily Business Standard.
Upsetting for some - Indian lawyers have complained for months now about the grey areas in Press Notes 2, 3 and 4 that were feared (or hoped) to allow foreign direct investment (FDI) through a backdoor route.
"I am surprised that such statements are being given," said one Mumbai-based corporate partner, who added that Press Note 4 governing downstream investment and ownership and control issues needed some work done. "We were quite sure that there would be something which would clearly clarify things and not leave anything to interpretation."
On the other hand, for several months now Legally India had heard off-the-record murmurings from a small handful of lawyers that they did not think the Finance Ministry would revise the Press Notes.
Did they know something that journalists and other lawyers didn't?
Pressure from Bharti, MTN and their advisers could have also swung the mood, as both the companies and the Government hope to seal the biggest cross-border M&A deal in India's history, which will rely on the Press Notes in its complex structuring.
And Pantaloon Retail too – whose current legal advisers Legally India has unsuccessfully been trying to confirm for ages – embarked on the first steps to an ambitious restructuring to increase foreign investment stakes in reliance on Press Notes 2 and 3.
An seemingly gutsy move at the time but perhaps Pantaloon and its advisers too knew something others did not, despite the restructuring having now apparently been put on hold.
Platinum Partners has joined the team of legal advisers on the MTN – Bharti Airtel merger talks alongside four other firms on what could be India's largest cross-border deal to date with a value of around $23bn (Rs 110,000 crore).
AZB & Partners has bagged the biggest ever Indian cross-border merger mandate, advising Bharti Airtel on its revived $23bn bid to take over South African telecoms major MTN.
London international Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer will be advising long-standing client MTN but the company's Indian counsel has not yet been chosen.
AZB Delhi partners Ajay Bahl (pictured) and Gautam Saha are understood to be leading the legal team for Bharti, having won the instruction off the back of previous work done by the firm for the company.