Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas

The firm's Construction and Investment funds rankings improved to ‘Outstanding’ this year. Its Tax ranking jumps to ‘Highly recommended’. Rishi Gautam, Manan Mehta and Bharat Vasani joined the corporate and M&A practice. Faraz Sagar strengthens the dispute resolution team, and Daksha Baxi arrives to lead the international tax practice. Departures include Nikhil Naredi (capital markets), Niloufer Lam and Piyush Mishra (financing), Sidhartha Barua (dispute resolution) and Sunil Jain (tax). 

Banking and finance  

Work highlights 

Worked with a State Bank of India-led lenders’ group on a Re200 billion project financing for HPCL-Mittal Energy’s Guru Gobind Singh petrochemical complex in Punjab. 

Key clients 

Adani Transmission, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, KKR, Standard Chartered Bank, UltraTech Cement, Yes Bank 

Capital markets 

Work highlights 

Advised Rural Electrification Corporation on one of India’s first US dollar-denominated green bonds to be issued by a public sector company. The $400 million bonds are part of the company’s $1 billion MTN programme. 

Assisted Godrej Agrovet on its novel IPO with an employee share purchase scheme and pre-IPO placement, meaning a portion of shares were reserved for employees. 

Key clients 

Deutsche Bank, Godrej Agrovet, Greenko Dutch, Prataap Snacks, Rural Electrification Corporation, Tata Steel 

Competition/antitrust 

Work highlights 

Represented IndusInd Bank in its consolidation with microfinancier Bharat Financial Inclusion. The Competition Commission of India closely scrutinises bank mergers by narrowly defining product markets in the banking sector. 

Represented Flipkart before the competition authorities during SoftBank’s acquisition of a 20% equity stake worth $2.5 billion. SoftBank’s stake in rival Snapdeal caused officials closely to examine the deal, which was ultimately approved.  

Key clients 

Adani Transmission, Board of Control for Cricket in India, CA Rover, Flipkart, IndusInd Bank, Qube Cinema Technologies, Schott Glass 

Construction 

Work highlights 

Drafted and reviewed the engineering, procurement and construction, and operations and maintenance agreements of SoftBank’s 350MW solar power plants in the Ghani Solar Park. The plants are part of the National Solar Mission promoting India’s use of solar energy. 

Key clients 

Embassy-Energy, Energon Soleq Ravi India Power Resources, Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency, SoftBank 

Corporate and M&A 

Work highlights 

Worked with Adani Transmission on its Re188 billion acquisition of Reliance Infrastructure’s Mumbai power division. 

Assisting Tata Teleservices with telecommunications matters on the divestment of its consumer wireless mobile division to Bharti Airtel and Bharti Hexacom. 

Key clients 

Adani Transmission, Global Infrastructure Partners, Grasim Industries, Lloyd Electric and Engineering, Nazara Technologies, Tata 

Dispute resolution 

Work highlights 

Representing the respondent in Competition Commission of India v Schott Glass India before the Supreme Court. The decision is expected to set a precedent for abuse of dominance cases. An issue is how to apply dissimilar conditions to equivalent transactions, which relates to price discrimination creating a competitive disadvantage.  

Key clients 

Board of Control for Cricket in India, Schott Glass 

Intellectual property 

Work highlights 

Assisted Prime Focus Technologies (PFT) investigate and litigate matters about the leak of a season-seven episode of Game of Thrones. Employees and a former employee of PFT allegedly leaked the show, and were terminated after the team investigated. 

Advised Fico, a US financial data analytics company, on its implementation of know-your-client and anti-money laundering software for State Bank of India. The project involved working with each company’s non-negotiable corporate policies. 

Key clients 

Fair Isaac, State Bank of India General Insurance  

Labour and employment 

Work highlights 

Assisted GCC Services, a subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch InBev, to take over a 1100-person business operations centre in Bengaluru from Accenture. Issues included preparing the termination notice to Accenture and settling the transferring employees’ termination benefits. 

Advised Sun TV Network on employment matters when it closed two divisions: Hyderabad’s Gemini News and Udaya News in Bangalore. 

Key clients 

GCC Services, Heidrick and Struggles, Sun TV Network, Yahoo!  

Private equity 

Work highlights 

Advised Global Infrastructure Partners on its nearly $5 billion acquisition of Equis’ renewable energy assets in seven Asian markets including Australia and Japan.  

Instructed by Flipkart on a deal involving eBay Singapore, Microsoft and Tencent investing $1.4 billion into the e-commerce company. Another part had Flipkart acquire eBay’s Indian subsidiary, removing a major competitor from the domestic e-commerce market.  

Key clients 

Apax Partners, Carlyle, Flipkart, Global Infrastructure Partners, Janalakshmi Financial Services, KKR, Sequoia Capital 

Regulatory 

Work highlights 

Helped the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas’ Directorate General of Hydrocarbons revise its policies on exploration and licensing and open acreage, making the market more harmonised. The team also drafted standard contracts including a revenue sharing agreement. 

Key clients 

IndusInd Bank, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Religare 

Restructuring and insolvency 

Work highlights 

Advised ICICI Bank on Innoventive Industries’ restructuring, the first corporate insolvency resolution process under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. The team successfully blazed a path through the National Company Law Tribunal and National Company Law Appellate Tribunal to the Mumbai High Court and Supreme Court. 

Represented the lenders’ group led by State Bank of India on Adhunik Power & Natural Resources’ debt restructuring. Edelweiss took over the company. The matter is an early deal under the Reserve Bank of India’s 2015 strategic debt restructuring scheme.  

Key clients 

Canara Bank, Heidrick and Struggles, ICICI Bank, State Bank of India  

Tax 

Work highlights 

Working with Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone on the tax implications of a special purpose vehicle to source raw material to market to Bangladesh. Income and indirect taxes are involved, and tax treaties need to be considered. 

Advised on ways to make a proposed merger between Honda Motors and an Indian subsidiary Honda Cars tax neutral.  

Key clients 

Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone, Honda, Qube Cinema Technologies, Reliance Jio Infocomm, Standard Life, Tata Communications, Yahoo!  

Client feedback 

“They have good lawyers who are business friendly and provide practical advice.” – Labour and employment 

“Attentive to matters and provides practical and good advice and tries hard to obtain a good outcome for clients.” – Intellectual property 

“Pro-active, proficient interpretation and drafting skills.” – Regulatory, Restructuring and insolvency 

“The team has been very good with the advice provided especially given they have been on the conservative side, which in our case is required because of the multiple issues in the company. They have a strong senior team.” – Capital markets, Competition/antitrust, Corporate and M&A 

 “The TMT team is very good. They got into the depth of the issue and provided a comprehensive response. They always get it right the first time.”  – Technology and telecommunications 

“He provides very easy and practical opinion.” “Good, thorough lawyer. Considers matters from all perspectives. Billing is also reasonable.” - Abe Abraham

“Very professional, friendly and has great knowledge and experience in the TMT domain. He understands the telecom industry and their matters far better than most.” - Asim Abbas

“Excellent communication and deep knowledge of the transaction.” - Avinash Umapathy

“Extremely efficient, meets deadlines and committed.” - Nivedita Rao

“Rahul has in-depth understanding of the regulatory requirement. He demonstrated a high level of integrity and clearly articulated the risks of non-compliance and also suggested alternate technical solutions to achieve compliance.” - Rahul Goel

“Very good knowledge about the subject, consistent advice and very good ability to handle the situation. Extremely helpful, dedicated and sincere.” “Strong M&A lawyer.” - Ruetveij Pandya

“Knowledgeable and very experienced.” - Sharad Mathkar

“Brilliant and an amazing collaborative partner.” - SR Patnaik

“Good quality.” - Ranjan Negi