partner hires

Exclusive: AZB & Partners Mumbai equity partner Yogesh Bhattarai has internally announced that he would leave the firm to go on a one-year sabbatical.

Azmul Haque has made the leap to Singaporean firm Shook Lin & Bok as partner and India co-head from Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP), where he was a senior associate.

Exclusive: Amarchand Mangaldas Delhi partner and head of tax Aseem Chawla has resigned, as the firm aims to refill the gap in its ranks.

Vijaya Sampath, group general counsel (GC) and adviser of almost nine years to India’s largest telecoms company Bharti Enterprises and former J Sagar Associates (JSA) partner, has joined Lakshmi Kumaran & Sridharan (LKS) as an equity partner yesterday to head its corporate practice in Delhi.

Exclusive in today’s Mint: Pramod Rao, ICICI Bank’s general counsel (GC) of more than seven years, will join young law firm IndusLaw as an equity partner to set up its Mumbai office.

Hariani & Co litigation head and partner Ranjit Shetty has joined Juris Corp in Mumbai.

Exclusive: Wadia Ghandy & Co has hired two laterals as partner from in-house and from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in London, and promoted two associates, growing its partnership to 28.

Exclusive: Khaitan & Co has not promoted any partners internally in its annual promotion round after internally restructuring its associate and partnership track, nine associates were promoted to senior associate level and one lateral associate partner joined in Mumbai.

Exclusive: Barely one-year-old start-up Verus Advocates will convert to equity partnership tomorrow with Bharucha & Partners corporate senior associates Dipankar Bandyopadhyay and Jay Parikh joining in Mumbai, while litigators Rishad Chowdhury and Sourav Bhagat will join in Delhi and Kolkata respectively.

MV Kini & Co has started a tax practice with the hire of start-up lawyer Shrikant Kamath as partner in Mumbai, while former in-house lawyer Ram Verma has joined the Hyderabad office.

Former Amarchand & Mangaldas associate and NLSIU Bangalore alum Anand Damodaran joins Ropes & Gray as partner today in London, leaving White & Case where he was a senior associate until last month.

J Sagar Associates (JSA) has hired Mayer Brown International London-based senior associate Pallavi Bedi as a retained partner for its Gurgaon project finance practice.

Juris Corp partner Freddy R Daruwala has joined ex-colleague Huzefa Nasikwala’s eight month old Juris Corp breakaway Nasikwala Law offices (NLO) as an equity partner yesterday. Daruwala will be heading the Mumbai-based firm’s Taxation and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) practice.

Former Juris Corp partner Vandana Sekhri, who resigned from 31 January, has joined Amarchand Mangaldas in Mumbai as senior consultant in the team of managing partner Cyril Shroff.

Juris Corp has hired former FoxMandal litigation co-head and partner Sandeep Kumar Mahapatra for its Delhi office.

Juris Corp Mumbai partner Vandana Sekhri has resigned from the firm, effective 31 January, to pursue other opportunities.

Exclusive: Amarchand Mangaldas Delhi equity partner and litigation head Ciccu Mukhopadhaya has resigned to start independent court practice after having been designated as senior counsel.

Amarchand Mangaldas has replaced its departing Hyderabad head by internally promoting principal associate Anshuman Jaiswal, and bulked up the Kolkata office by re-hiring Siddhartha Dutta from Luhtra & Luthra.

Amarchand Mangaldas Hyderabad head and partner Kartik Mahalingam has resigned to join the “philanthropic investment firm” Omidyar Network as its first India-based legal head in Mumbai.