Shardul Amarchand, JSA, HSF act on record $1.6bn Brookfield-Reliance towers buy

Tuesday, 24 January 2017 By Legally India Corporate M&A

“On 21 December, RCom signed a binding agreement with Brookfield to sell a 51% stake in Reliance Infratel for Rs11,000 crore. RCom currently owns close to a 96% stake in the company, while the remaining ownership is with minority investors,” reported Mint on 29 December 2016.

This is one of the largest investment in India’s infrastructure sector by an overseas financial investor, according to Shardul Amarchand’s statement, with the deal having been signed on 21 December 2016.

J Sagar Associates (JSA) led for Reliance, with joint managing partner Dina Wadia, and partner Sandeep Mehta, Rajesh Pal and Manav Raheja, and associates Prannoy Semwal and Ronak Shah.

Herbert Smith Freehills advised Reliance on non-Indian laws, led by corporate partner Roddy Martin and senior associate Joseph Fisher, and assisted by senior associate Hayley Brady and associate Sid Shukla. HSF Singapore-based corporate partner Mark Robinson and London-based tax partner Howard Murray also advised on the deal.

Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas acted for Brookfield Infrastructure Group on due diligence, structuring of the overall transaction and in the drafting, negotiations and finalisation of the transaction documents, according to the firm.

The Shardul Amarchand team was led in general corporate by managing partner Akshay Chudasama and partner Jay Gandhi and partner Roopal Kulsrestha, with senior associate Abhishek Parekh and associate Neelam Pathak.

Also assisting at Shardul Amarchand were corporate principal associate Ankit Guha and principal associate Kunal Mehta, with associate Surbhi Ahluwalia, associate Meghna Nachappa, associate Komal Modi, associate Shubra Sharma, and associate Nishant Sharma.

The real estate team was led by partner Ashoo Gupta, principal associate Daryush Marfatia, principal associate designate Saloni Sheth and associate Pallavi Kishore.

Shardul Amarchand also fielded securities team partner Yogesh Chande and associate Gaurav Malhotra, disputes partner Nitesh Jain, associate Saurabh Saraogi, associate Jeet Karia, and associate Payal Chhabria, competition law partner Shweta Shroff and Gauri Chhabria, banking partner Debashree Dutta and senior associate Sourabh Bhattacharya.

Brookfields has been a long-standing client of Chudasama’s, with him having also advised the asset management firm on a Rs 563 crore deal in 2015 shortly after joining Shardul Amarchand from JSA.

J Sagar Associates (JSA)Herbert Smith FreehillsShardul Amarchand Mangaldas

Comments

Associate 24 Jan 2017, 14:16
+2 -0
Why Shardul and Pallavi name are not there?
Blue eyes hypnotize 24 Jan 2017, 14:17
+6 -2
it looks like that JSA acted on both sides.
Well well well 24 Jan 2017, 16:00
+0 -0
Didn't JSA advise on competition issues?
Team DSK 25 Jan 2017, 08:58
+1 -0
us waqt kapoor apni team ko lekar aa raha tha idhar
26 people? 25 Jan 2017, 09:52
+0 -0
26 people from SAM worked in this one transaction. I shudder to think of the bills raised if done on an hourly basis
Shudder 25 Jan 2017, 12:43
+1 -0
It just happened to be one of the largest transactions in the counrty. Shudder.
Sammie 26 Jan 2017, 11:34
+0 -2
Haha. No matter how big the mandate, fielding more than 6/7 counsel can never be justified. It does injustice to the client and the quality of work with the same work product being first drafted by an associate, then reviewed by a senior associate, then principal associate and then finally a partner. But I guess if your entire office (barring the national M&A head and his team) has no work, you would rather staff almost everyone on a mandate this big to make the most of it.

In short, behti Ganga mein Sabne haanth dho liya.
rt 26 Jan 2017, 12:50
+0 -0
That is called being thorough - par course in foreign law firms also and Brookfield (who I have acted for in the UK on other deals), would expect no less. Note they also did not have external English law counsel
kianganz 26 Jan 2017, 13:18
+6 -0
I would agree - it is a mark of a certain maturity of a firm if it can staff a transaction with 6 different teams, and get them to play together nicely.

Why should a standard M&A lawyer be involved in real estate DD, for instance? Why should an IP lawyer not handle that part of a deal? Or a litigation lawyer handle the disputes due diligence and related clauses or advice?

That is not to say that each person listed above would have done hundreds of hours of work necessarily - I imagine some would have maybe billed a few hours tops.

But I remember that when I worked in the UK, if we were talking a multi-billion deal (but also smaller ones), dozens of lawyers would be roped in from across departments and no one would bat an eyelid.
Commenting is closed for this article.