Bangalore firm Mundkur Law Offices, which was set up in 2007 by Ramanand Mundkur, has merged its practice with Mumbai-headquartered Bharucha & Partners, under the new branding Bharucha Singh Mundkur (BSM).

This will give Bharucha a 12-fee-earner base in Bangalore, including husband-and-wife team and partners Ramanand Mundkur and Divya Balagopal.

Ramanand Mundkur, who specialises in corporate finance deals, M&A and private equity, commented: “We’re excited about the merger.”

Bharucha co-founding partner Alka Bharucha added: “Having a presence in the South, in the West and the North completes our so-called geographical spread, at least for the immediate future.

“One of the important things is that we not commit to growing rapidly and opening offices in every jurisdiction, but that we actually find good people, and sometimes that takes time.”

Mundkur is a 1994 NLSIU Bangalore graduate with a 2002 LLM from Harvard Law School. He had worked at Arthur Andersen between 1994 and 1998, as counsel at the United Nations Compensation Commission from 1998 to 2001, followed by five years at the International Monetary Fund until 2007.

He had set up Mundkur in October 2007.

Balagopal is a 1996 NLSIU graduate, who had worked at the bar with Indu Malhotra, and at UNICEF in Geneva and medical malpractice firm Rindler Morgan in Boston between 1999 and 2002.

She specialises in education-related legal work.

Bharucha has a corporate and litigation office in Mumbai, as well as smaller office in Delhi.

Alka Bharucha said: “The first and most important thing is that we are really happy with this merger, because we have been working together and across each other on several mandates.

“We share a clear alignment of values and vision, client satisfaction is an abiding and uncompromising commitment to professional ethics. All of this is really important for us.”

Bharucha Singh Mundkur will be 12 partners strong after the merger (of whom 4 are women), with a total of 75 lawyers.

Part of Bharucha’s prior merger partner Arthe Law, the Abhishek Malhotra-headed TMT Law Practice, had split off last month.

Arthe co-founder and litigator DP Singh, however, remained, with his name now part of the merged firm’s branding.

“We would like to strengthen Delhi Bombay and Bangalore and focus on doing what we’ve always been doing but on a slightly larger scale,” added Alka Bharucha about the firm’s future plans.