Hemant Sahai

Amitabh Sharma, the managing partner of HSA Advocates who had joined in April 2016 from Khaitan & Co, has laid down his management duties at the firm.

Khaitan & Co energy, infrastructure and corporate partner Amitabh Sharma has resigned and will join HSA Advocates as its managing partner, as HSA founder and managing partner Hemant Sahai is seeking to institutionalise the firm.

Former Trilegal counsel and regulatory practice head Sakya Singha Chaudhuri has joined HSA Advocates as partner to head the firm’s regulatory practice. Chaudhuri left Trilegal in the last week of July and joined HSA in August.

Seth Dua & Associates bags three new partners in competition, TMT & tax.

Former DSK Legal partner Jagvir Singh will join HSA Advocates as the third partner in the firm’s project finance practice on 16 August, while also focusing on banking and corporate work.

This fortnight’s deals package conspicuously features international investors, not only in terms of cross-border M&As and investments but also on the litigation side.

Khaitan-Trilegal inject $78m into Caparo Energy; JSA, Amarchand, S&R on LVMH luxury Genesis investment; Khaitan double teams with Clifford Chance on StanChart loan, AZB’s $1.4bn steel loan, plus sports, projects and Kolkata litigation.

Exclusive: HSA Advocates Mumbai partner and office head Utsa Shome, who had joined the firm in 2009 from AZB & Partners, will head up Kolkata firm Argus Partners’ new Mumbai office.

Exclusive: Hemant Sahai Associates has rebranded itself to HSA Advocates and hired two later partners, including one Herbert Smith senior associate and senior Delhi litigator Meenakshi Arora, taking the firm up to 10 partners.

Hemant Sahai Associates (HSA) acted as sole legal advisor on a micro finance investment by the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation in Delhi-based organisation Invest India Micro Pension Services Private Limited (IIMPS) raising roughly $1m for retirement pension plans and other savings.

Some lessons and insights for lawyers from cricket:

1.) Foreign players are popular

AMSS, the leading law firm in India recently hired Niloufer Lam, a Banking law specialist from UK; recruited an Irish lawyer Paku Khan; and had UK Chief Operating Officer (COO) in Valerie Bowles.

At the same time Amarchand's turnovers are hitting the roof. This obviously cannot be owed only to the foreign players but they surely seem to be 'liked' by the Indians.

If Amarchand has a UK COO for the internal managment, Paddy Upton from South Africa has worked with the India Cricket team as the mental conditioning coach. And then you have Gary Kirsten and Eric Simons as the head coach and the bowling coach respectively.

Venkatesh Prasad and Robin Singh, the Indian cricket team's young coaches were shown the door and the former Amarchand' COO Bithika Anand resigned.

So why this fascination for the foreigner*? A tentative answer is at the end of the post.


2. Bond Bhaiya! The whole thing is that ki bhaiya sabse bada rupaiya!

Bond. Shane Bond. The genuine quickie preferred to play for ICL to playing for his country. It is another thing that the flightless down-to-earth Kiwis (well they can't soar like the Eagles, roar like the Tigers or hop like the Kangaroos) welcomed him back to the team.

Ravindra Jadeja, the left arm spin bowling all-rounder thought that he had many other skills to his all-round abilities. This 'man in blue' was having a sprightly colourful life. Alas! He was left white faced after being caught red handed for doing blackish money things. (You won't get the joke if you are colour blind, or are dullness bound). J

While cricketers seem to prefer money over country, NLU grads prefer money over life. Tell me what specimen of a 24 year old gets kicks from drafting contracts and M&As working 14 hours a day?


3. Team Building

If you get great individuals on board with ordinary team spirit, they'll fail. Get ordinary individuals with great team spirit, they'll succeed.

I hope some of you remember the World Cricket Team (WCT) which played against the great Australian team. WCT had Sehwag, Kallis, Pollock, Murali, Flintoff etc. It played Aus on several occassions and lost very very badly.

Man to man the WCT was probably stronger. Aus won because it was a team and not a bunch of individuals. The Paras Kuhad-Hemant Sahai episode tells us the importance of that something which allows two groups to march together as one. Team Spirit is important "...to preserve the culture- that we have always lived by...", to succeed, to thrive.

See how a shared value system holds JSA (Jyoti Sagar Associates) together.


The tentative answer

*Maybe control from someone with different values, belief systems, language and management style is more effective. Or it could be that becoming a cricket coach or a law firm coach is still not a mainstream career option for the Indian students.

Because while every 15 year old kid in every gully and every 18 year old in every law school want to be a cricketer and a law firmite respectively; becoming a coach/consultant is still out of the radar.

Are Indians too mesmerised by talents and prodigies and learn only upto a certain, very young age and then stop the process? Afterall, being a coach means being a keen student for long. Really long.

I am no expert on this. What do you say?

PS- Here is the previous (and controversial) post on IPL, cricket and law.

Coinciding with Paras Kuhad Associates' demerger from Hemant Sahai Associates, Paras Kuhad spin-off firm Vidhii Partners has merged with Bangalore firm Harsha & Co, acquired Mumbai office space and is training its sights on creating a pan-Indian litigation firm.

Hemant Sahai Associates and Paras Kuhad & Associates have split only two months after announcing the ill-fated merger of their practices to create PHA Advocates.

SN Gupta & Co has started up an M&A practice in Mumbai by hiring a Khaitan & Co senior associate as a partner and an associate from Hemant Sahai Associates.

The firm has also taken on new office space in Mumbai and plans to build a litigation team.

Hemant Sahai Associates has recruited an AZB senior associate as a partner in Mumbai, after recently merging with Paras Kuhad & Associates to create a national firm called PHA Advocates.

Paras Kuhad & Associates' ex-Mumbai head has started a new firm under the banner Vidhii Partners, along with one partner and three associates from the firm which merged with Hemant Sahai earlier this month.

Moily on foreign firms, league tables and law firm movers and shakers in this week's newsletter.

The two co-founders of Paras Kuhad & Associates's Mumbai have quit as one is to start a new law firm and the remaining office continues working on last week's merger with Hemant Sahai Associates.