Slaughter and May has topped the mergermarket value league table of international law firms that advised on M&A deals in the 2017 calendar year.

Trilegal Delhi corporate, M&A and private equity counsel Vishwanath Pratap Singh has left the firm several weeks ago and is understood to be joining Luthra & Luthra as a partner in Delhi.

The Supreme Court refused to entertain adjournment pleas by senior advocates in today’s hearing of the Bar Council of India (BCI) writ against the entry of foreign law firms into India, reported Bar & Bench.

Itochu Petroleum Co, the Singapore-based subsidiary of Japanese trading company Itochu Corporation has announced the acquisition of 19.7% stake in Aegis Logistics’ wholly-owned subsidiary, Hindustan Aegis LPG (HALPG), for INR 239 crores (apporximately $37.8m), as reported by Business Standard and VC Circle in May of last year. In addition to India, Itochu Corporation, the Japanese multinational trading group specialising in oil & gas, metals and other commodities, operates LPG import hubs in Japan and the Philippines.

Senior advocate Harish Salve helped the Delhi high court approve, but not yet notify, a set of new rules which would enable it to impose a staggering and unprecedented amount of costs on litigants filing frivolous cases before it, encourage video-conferencing trials and reduce litigation time in other ways.

AZB & Partners and Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas (SAM) acted on the biggest and greatest number of deals respectively, according to mergermarket (MM), which captured far fewer deals than both Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters databases that we had reported last week, in part due to its different deal eligibility criteria (see below).

The death penalty would stay on Indian statute books for at least another 50 years, predicted a former Chief Justice of India (CJI) in a wide-ranging study of opinions of former apex court judges conducted by NLU Delhi on the death penalty in India.

Rajasthan-based healthcare provider Karma Primary Healthcare Services has raised an undisclosed amount in a funding round led by early-stage investor and equity crowd-funding platform 1Crowd and its investor community, according to a press release by Legasis Partners. The health-tech startup had ear...

AZB & Partners was the busiest and fastest growing law firm in India this year according to year-end rankings released separately by Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters.

Former HSA Advocates partners Sakya Chaudhuri, Avijeet Lala and Anand Shrivastava’s Delhi start-up Neeti Niyaman has expanded to Mumbai with the opening of a new office in Fort.

MDP & Partners now again has a corporate practice and a projects / banking practice respectively with the addition of two new partners after rehiring former associate Pranav N Jain and former associate Malav Virani.

US-based private equity major Carlyle Asia Growth Partners has made an undisclosed but a significant majority stake acquisition in Chennai-headquartered healthcare solutions provider Visionary RCM Infotech (VRCM) through its affiliate Carlyle Growth Investments IV to support its growth and expansion...

“Ola, operated by ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd, has acquired online food delivery start-up Foodpanda India from its German parent Delivery Hero AG in an all-stock deal that will see the ride-hailing firm infuse $200m in Foodpanda India’s operations,” reported Mint.

GLC Mumbai 2007 alumnus Nitin Jain has joined his GLC senior Archana Balasubramanian’s four-year-old start-up Agama Law Associates as managing partner, having left his role as in-house counsel at Tata Chemicals.

Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan (LKS) Delhi-based partners Abir Roy and T Sundar Ramanathan have left the firm to start-up an independent firm in collaboration with former LKS senior partner S Seetharaman, who left the firm in October.

Premium dining venture Massive Restaurants owned by popular chef Jiggs Kalra and his son Zorawar Kalra has recently raised Rs 160 crores (approximately $25m) through a mix of domestic and foreign direct investment from mid-market PE firm Gaja Capital under a primary round, as reported by The Economi...

J Sagar Associates (JSA) Chennai corporate partner Varun Sriram co-founded corporate law firm VB Legal in Chennai with independent lawyer Bhavya Sriram (no relation) two weeks ago, as first reported by VC Circle.

Acadgild, the Bengaluru-based online education startup operated by Edvista Education Services has recently been acquired by Aeon Learning in an all-stock deal amounting to Rs 64 crores ($10m) as reported by VC Circle and Mint. Acadgild focuses on online degrees and skill development programmes in big data, deep learning and UI/UX design web development, among others and had raised initial investment from venture capital firm Jupiter Capital and K. Ganesh of GrowthStory.

Mukesh Ambani-promoted 4G telecoms network Reliance Jio has agreed to buy the mobile business assets (including the spectrum, mobile towers and optical fibre network) of his younger brother Anil Ambani-promoted Reliance Communications, reported the PTI in The Hindu Business Line and others. Cyril Am...

“Indo-UK Institute of Health (IUIH), a healthcare provider, said that work on the second of its 11 Medicity facilities in Amaravati is slated to begin in the coming days as IUIH is scheduled to get possession of allotted land from the Andhra Pradesh government very soon. The hospital is being built in association with King’s College Hospital, London, at an investment outlay of Rs 1,600 crore,” reported the Times of India.