Trilegal

Answer: It depends (but nine is magic number)

Trilegal counsel Rachika Sahay has joined global oil and gas services company Weatherford as its sole legal counsel in India.

The markets are picking up it looks like – here’s the round-up of what firms have been getting up to.

GNLU Gandhinagar, which has placed at least 13 fourth year students this year, refused to divulge figures for its 11 April Day Zero recruitment again.

NUJS Kolkata’s 2015 graduating batch has accepted 27 job offers across seven firms with a mix of 16 so-called Day Zero offers made after interviews on campus on April 16 and 11 pre-placement offers (PPOs) made after internships to students.

NLU Delhi’s third batch, that will graduate in 2015 has already placed 10 students with confirmed jobs after its Day Zero of recruitment on 4 April, with four offers subject to internships and three vacation placements with foreign firms.

Traditional NLU Jodhpur recruiters Amarchand Mangaldas, Luthra & Luthra and Trilegal hit campus again on 2 April, in addition to Khaitan & Co, to make 12 job offers to the class graduating in 2015.

AZB, Trilegal and Luthra had the biggest reported deals in the first quarter of the year, which was a bit of a let down compared to the first quarter of 2014 but is looking up.

Anything can happen in a nation where cricket is religion, including bidding adieu to one of India’s “Big Six” law firms to churn out statistical commentary.

Trilegal has hired Deloitte counsel Himanshu S Sinha as a partner in its direct tax practice in Delhi and promoted infrastructure counsel Neeraj Menon to its partnership.

AZB & Partners acted for Tata’s subsidiaries Trent and Trent Hypermarket that entered into a joint venture with Anglo-global supermarket retail behemoth Tesco, which drafted in Trilegal.

Leapfrog Investment bought a Rs 174 crore ($29m) stake in IFMR Capital Finance, advised by Desai & Diwanji and Trilegal.

Trilegal Delhi senior associate Mohit Jolly left the firm on 15 March to set up RDJ & Associates in Delhi, focussing on disputes, corporate-commercial, secretarial and intellectual property (IPR) work.

Trilegal and Japanese firm Mori Hamada & Matsumoto (MHM) advised Japanese metal giant Hitachi Metals in buying a majority stake in two Vikas Group entities.

Litigation, corporate, M&A, capital markets and private equity deals in brief from a cross-section of India’s top law firms.

Amarchand Mangaldas emerged as the large law firm with the highest ratio of female lawyers ranked by the 2014 Chambers and Partners lawyer directory, while J Sagar Associates (JSA) and Trilegal came lowest with as few as 6 per cent of senior female lawyers.

J Sagar Asssociates (JSA), Nishith Desai Associates and Trilegal acted on Goldman Sachs’ and Mitsui Global Investment’s Rs 315 crore ($50m) investment in Global Beverages & Foods.

14 Indian law firm partners and senior associates will be named as “up and comers” and “associates to watch” in legal directory Chambers and Partners’ yet-to-be released Asia Pacific 2014 guide.

Deals round-up of more than a dozen recent instructions.

Yogesh Bhattarai, who left AZB & Partners’ equity partnership in 2012 for a sabbatical, has joined Trilegal.