Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas acted for Capital First, led by Mumbai area managing partner Akshay Chudasama, and the M&A team led by partner Ashni Roy, and associates Akansha Singh and Neha Shaw. The firm’s banking and finance team was led by partner Veena Sivaramakrishnan, consultant Gopalkrishna Hegde and associate Dhananjai Charan. The securities law team was led by partner Yogesh Chande and associate Gaurav Malhotra.

AZB & Partners acted for IDFC Bank led by Mumbai partner Ashwath Rau and partner Anu Tiwari, senior associate Vipul Jain and associate Aditya Alok, as well as Mumbai managing partner Zia Mody. Also involved were associates Utkarsh Bhatnagar, Rachana Rautray and Sushim Aryan.

The deal could be worth Rs 29,000 ($4.5bn) crore in terms of the total market value of both financial companies, according to the Economic Times.

Update 10 January 2019: According to an AZB release, the deal value was Rs 9541 crore ($1500m).

We understand that AZB had also acted for IDFC in the mid-2017 aborted IDFC-Shriram merger talks. Trilegal had advised the Shriram Group and key shareholder Piramal Enterprises on that deal.

In early 2017 AZB had acted for IDFC on the Grama Vidiyal Micro Finance acquisition.

Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas had hired the senior director and legal compliance head of IDFC’s private equity fund IDFC Alternatives, Shagoofa Rashid Khan, in 2016, after the departure of Rau to AZB.

In 2015 Shardul Amarchand had advised on IDFC Bank’s restructuring.

IDFC Bank to grow retail business with Capital First deal

Mumbai: IDFC Bank Ltd may have finally found a way to shed its infrastructure finance company image and become a people’s bank—by merging Capital First Ltd with itself. The merger could be a way for the lender to build its retail book, something it has been unable to do in the two-and-a-half years since becoming a bank.

As of 30 September, IDFC Bank’s low-cost current account savings account (CASA) stood at 8.2% of its total deposits.

Retail loans comprise merely 26% of its total loan book, whereas for most established banks, the CASA ratio is above 30%. Analysts say that the bank will be able to leverage the retail network of Capital First to garner more CASA. Merger with Capital First is likely to raise the share of retail loans to 45%.

reported Malvika Joshi in Mint.