Khaitan Sud & Partners (KSP) opened a second office in September, in South Delhi, moving its recently built corporate-focussed team to the new office under partner Tanuj Sud.

The office is in a 3500 square feet space in Lajpat Nagar, overlooking the ring road, and seats nine lawyers including Sud and one of the firm’s salaried partners.

Sud told Legally India that KSP managing partner Umesh Khaitan had, diverging from the firm’s tradition, recently given KSP’s equity partners – Sud, Malini Sud and Ashutosh Khaitan - complete autonomy to independently develop their own practices.

There has been no change to KSP’s partnership structure yet, following this decision but Sud is now focussing on building KSP’s corporate practice which, he said, currently handles transactions from the infrastructure space and the healthcare space.

Sud said that he had made two non-partner hires in the last year for the corporate practice.

The firm has traditionally focussed on project finance but in this space too, he said, KSP has recently seen a shift in mandates from banks’ “routine project finance work” to refinancing, restructuring and debt capital market transactions.

KSP, which was founded in 1997 with co-founding partners who have left the partnership since, has functioned from Delhi’s Defence Colony since then. It currently has six salaried partners in addition to its four equity partners.