Sandeep Parekh, current IIM Ahmedabad visiting associate faculty and former Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) executive director in enforcement and legal affairs, is setting up a Mumbai financial law boutique Finsec Law Advisors with a three-stage growth plan.

Parekh (pictured) will move from Ahmedabad to Mumbai next month and start working from a one-person office in South Mumbai on 1 July.

“I’ve been in the financial sector for most of my life,” he told Legally India, explaining that teaching securities law at IIM was somewhat of a cooling off period after his previous job as SEBI executive director between 2006 and 2008 heading up the enforcement and legal affairs departments in Mumbai.

He said that he would start Finsec Law Advisors as a boutique financial sector law firm, beginning with securities law and then moving into other areas.

“I have divided the growth into three parts,” he outlined his strategy. “One is regulatory advice and opinion given a background with the regulator, which I plan not only to offer to clients but also to other law firms.”

He said that he would hope to establish the firm as a “lawyers’ lawyer” initially and that he had also received a preliminary mandate to advise a stock exchange on such matters.

The second stage, which he hoped to launch after several months he said, would be securities market litigation, finally followed by transactional work such as IPOs and other securities work within a year.

Parekh explained that he would grow only gradually. “Once I get to Bombay I’ll start securing people. It’s going to be a slow process and am not going to pick up more than one or two [initially].”

“I am not looking at a specific size but looking at quality. I want to make it one of the most respectable places to work and want people to be proud of fact that they’re working at this firm, which is why didn’t want to name it after my surname.”

Before joining SEBI in 2006 he was a partner at P.H. Parekh & Co in Delhi, before which he was an associate advocate at Wadia Ghandy in Mumbai between 1998 and 2000, preceded by one-year stint at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington and between 1992 and 1996 working as a legal assistant with Supreme Court senior counsel Harish Salve.

He completed his LLB from Delhi University in 1995 and took his LLM in Georgetown University in Washington while in 1997.

Responding to how long he had been planning to open up his own law firm, he joked: “All my life.”