Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas Mumbai corporate partner Ashwath Rau has joined AZB & Partners today with partners Anu Tiwari and Dhruv Singhal, confirmed managing partner Zia Mody for the first time.

Zia Mody told Legally India: “Ashwath joining us is very exciting. His joining us is an important step towards cementing our already strong position in the general corporate transactional and advisory space.”

As we reported last week, Rau was released from his notice period early after Cyril Amarchand and AZB reached an agreement to also shorten the notice period of AZB Delhi senior partner Percy Billimoria.

Rau had joined Amarchand Mangaldas, as it then was, in 1999 after graduating from NLSIU Bangalore.

We understand a full press release from AZB will follow later today. We’ll update the story then.

Update-1: Press release

In the press release, senior partners Zia Mody, Ajay Bahl and Bahram Vakil said: “Having known and worked with Ashwath on many complex deals over the years, we have the highest regard for his ability as a lawyer. We are very excited about his addition to our team and look forward to working with him to take our practice to new heights.”

Rau commented in the release: “I am delighted to be joining a firm for the quality and repute of AZB & Partners and excited about the opportunity to work with the AZB team, many of whom I have had the pleasure of dealing with across the table on many deals over the years.

“Amarchand Mangaldas gave me the opportunity to start and build my career and as I move on to its next phase, my sincere thanks and best wishes to Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas and my former partners and colleagues there.”

According to the press release, he had recently acted on Kotak Mahindra’s $2.4bn acquisition of ING Vysya Bank, and the $1.2bn sale of Viom Networks to the American Tower Company by the Tata Group, and he has been ranked by legal directories as a leading corporate, M&A and private equity lawyer who was a “skillful negotiator” with creative thinking and highly rated in the fund structuring space.

The firm has 350 lawyers with offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Gurgaon, Bangalore and Pune, according to the release.

M&A league tables effect?

AZB has consistently topped the mergermarket M&A league tables, coming top by volume (82 deals) and value ($11bn) in the 2015 calendar year.

Cyril Amarchand was in fourth position on both those metrics in 2015, with 33 registered deals worth $5.3bn.

Cyril Amarchand was top by value and third by volumes for the first quarter of 2016 with 7 deals worth a total of $3.2bn, while AZB was in third position by value with 10 deals worth $2.1bn.

In 2014, the combined Amarchand Mangaldas entity had total deal values of nearly $15bn, nearly twice that of AZB that year, which had marginally topped the table with 44 deals.

Rau joining today was just one of the sneak previews in our premium subscribers newsletter on Friday. Sign up to know about the biggest news and littlest tit-bits before they happen.