AZB & Partners has hired former State Bank of India (SBI) managing director Arijit Basu as a senior consultant according to a press release from the firm; the exact ambit of his role was not clear at the time of going to press though it is likely to be a part-time position.

Basu had been appointed managing director of SBI from late 2018 until October 2020. Before that he had been managing director at SBI Life Insurance for four years.

He holds a degree in Economics and a masters in history and had begun his career at SBI around 37 years ago.

We have reached out to AZB & Partners asking whether he will be working at the firm in a full-time fee-earning role or otherwise.

According to AZB’s press statement, Basu’s “key leadership positions” have included serving as:

(i) Chairman of the working group on Project Finance, constituted by the Inter Ministerial Steering Committee on the 2020 National Infrastructure Pipeline; and

(ii) a member of the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Committee of the CII.

A popular career trajectory

Basu is neither the first banking industry, SBI or even SBI ex-chief to join Indian law firms or, indeed, AZB. In 2018, AZB had:

• hired ex-SBI chairwoman Arundhati Bhattacharya, also as a senior consultant in a part-time role in 2018, and
• RBI executive director G Padmanabhan in 2015.

Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas has also been tapping SBI and the RBI regularly: ex-SBI senior Pradeep Kumar Bagga joined Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas in 2015, and the erstwhile Amarchand Mangaldas had hired ex-Reserve Bank of India (RBI) deputy governor Anand Sinha in 2014, and ex-SEBI chief UK Sinha had joined CAM in 2018.

And today CAM had announced the joining of Arjun Goswami, a former Mumbai in-house lawyer and longer-time department head of the Asian Development Bank based in Manila.