Khaitan & Co has hired former White & Case New York associate Shishir Mehta as a partner in Mumbai to start up a banking and finance practice.

Mehta (pictured) has joined the Mumbai office today (1 April) and will focus on building up a specialist banking and finance practice, as well as on clients from Gujarat where he is originally from.

Khaitan & Co partner Rabindra Jhunjhunwala said: “Banking and finance are areas which we’ve been wanting to strengthen. With his foreign experience and his Indian contacts I think we’ve found a good guy to lead the practice in Bombay.”

Mehta graduated from NLSIU Bangalore in 1999, completed an LLM at London School of Economics and sat his articles at Slaughter and May in London.

He had worked at White & Case in New York since 2005, returning to India in the summer of 2009 to explore local career opportunities.

Mehta said: “This is truly a deal that complements me and them. For me it’s a very good platform and the kind of work which we can do together is tremendous. I think there’s huge scope to synergise existing clients and a lot of the Indian work that is happening in Singapore.”

He added that he would also focus on business from Gujarat, which was akin to his “backyard”. “There are very few Gujarat lawyers in the country but Gujarat is one of the most industrial states in the country. It’s a personal interest of mine and there are big players in the market who have not gone into Gujarat in an organised way.”

Mehta explained that the opportunities in the Indian market were one of the main reasons he had returned.

“In London you are one of 10,000 lawyers in the city,” he said. “Here you can really carve out a niche for yourself.”