Scoop: Gupta was fifth-ranked in our 2018-19 league table of corporate dealmakers.
Link Legal India Law Services (LLILS) corporate partner, Manish Gupta, is due to join IndusLaw in Delhi, we have reliably learned.
Gupta is a 2004 NLIU Bhopal graduate and had joined Link Legal in 2015 as a partner from Luthra & Luthra, as it then was, where he had been a managing associate.
He was overall fifth-ranked dealmaker in our 2018-19 InLegal 50 corporate dealmakers of the year list, having led on a total of 13 deals, worth $1.6bn.
And in the 2019-20 financial year, Gupta has already been involved in 12 deals with values of $915m so far, for a range of corporates and clients, according to our live tables.
Yesterday we had reported that Link Legal corporate partner Siddharth Srivastava had joined Khaitan & Co.
However, Link Legal had also made three promotions in its corporate commercial practice at the end of 2019, and its senior corporate partner Anand Srivastava had returned to the firm in 2018 after a sabbatical LLM.
For IndusLaw, meanwhile, Gupta’s joining seems like a clear signalling of intent to try to play in the ever bigger leagues in 2020, following its creation of a capital markets practice from nowhere late last year.
In 2018-19 IndusLaw had already snuck into the bottom of the Prestige Corporate Firms tier, just behind the Marquee Firms.
We have reached out to Gupta, IndusLaw and Link Legal for comment.
Update 13:34: Link Legal managing partner Atul Sharma commented: “All the best to him.”
Comments
This is called Chanakya Neeti.
So don't waste time posting comments. All is well.
Frankly, only those involved in this know the truth. Rest al is speculation per se.
From LL's perspective these movements will certainly slow their journey to becoming a top tier firm but wouldn't stop it. LL will continue to slide on this upward curve, albeit a little slowly. LL continues to have a fine mix of talent and experience in corporate. Mr. Anand is back, Anuj Trivedi is making the right buzz in the market and has been active on the deal side, Venkat again has a lot of experience and did some very interesting work last year (haven't heard of any his deals this year though), Jha is holding the fort for cap market and with Vinu Peter and PK, being made APs, LL should be able to manage. It is up to so called senior partners now to ensure constant work flow for new APs. Also, time for Mumbai folks to up their game as there is hardly any news about their Mumbai corporate team.
Sidhartha's exit will certainly be felt more as there is hardly anyone left in LL to manage the IBC work.
For Khaitan, this move makes a lot of sense as they had been looking for someone like Sidhartha for quite some time. Indus is a tricky bet - In cricketing terms Indus is like Rishab Pant (when he broke into the national side). Lot of flamboyant moves but needs to keep head down and deliver. A lot of comparison with Trilegal may bring in complacency. Good thing is that i have hardly seen any partner exits from Indus so should be a good place to work.
Missed this?
Rajdeep - HSA
Saloni - Apple
Anurag - SAM
Shashwat - SAM
Siddharth - K&Co
Manish - Indus
Harish - L&L
Sarojanand - Own Practice
Jay (CEO) - Indus
Raunak - Own Practice
Bhumesh - Somewhere
Nikhil - Somewhere
Nilesh - Somewhere
All exits within a period of less than 2 years. Im sure I have missed out many.
Nikhil - In-house
Hasit - Counsel Practice
Alok - K-Law
Ashutosh - In-house
No one is bigger than an institution. ! Full power to LL to fight back . The 3 new APs have all the wherewithal to deal with this. Why no colleague of LL with MG? , The reason well known.
I am an insider and I fully agree with you. No impact on the institution but it will be able to fight back - some inconsistency, but it is okay. Your English is not very good and you have missed writing 'did not', but it does not matter. No doubt, an institution is always bigger than anyone and no body is under any misconception ...when Anand's 2 year sabbatical did not impact, why would Manish's or Siddharth's departure have any impact. Your knowledge is incomplete (or may be it was a deliberate omission), 1 SA and 1 associate are going with him and given an opportunity, his entire team might have left with him and yes, the reason is also well known. But it does not matter and you and I will continue to ignore the trust and sing songs in praise of the current lot...for the obvious reasons.
And now, what is an institution - a group of individuals who comes under one brand name and one or more set of leaders. But when good people are leaving left, right and centre, the so-called leaders should stop and think - what's wrong, rather than taking an arrogant stand that institution will continue or fight back or bad mouthing their star partners when they are leaving. But no, we did not learn anything in the past and we will not learn anything now, because we are just too good and don't care.
come on.
and everyone is big. let us not talk of people like they are commodities.
Apart from the fact that he is a brilliant lawyer, he is also a very good teacher. I knew more about transaction documents than my seniors at premier law firms because he took time out to tell me the relevance of various clauses. I can vouch for the fact that most A0-A2's from marquee law firms have no clue about why we have exit rights in a transaction document.
Wish him the very best! Hope his kitty is full of unicorns.