Shearman & Sterling, DLA Piper, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Salans, Linklaters and Clifford Chance have advised on Tata Steel’s sale of Teesside Cast Products’s (TCP’s) assets to Thailand’s largest steel producer Sahaviriya Steel for $469m.

Clifford Chance joined hands with J Sagar Associates (JSA) and AZB & Partners to jointly advise Bayer Healthcare on its JV with Cadila Healthcare.

From today Indian law firms will have to get used to AZB being officially single again, Legally India can reveal.

Clifford Chance and AZB broke off their best friendship late last night, which means that global CC rivals will again be more comfortable approaching AZB with referrals.

“I don’t think there is any single international firm out there which has the ability to sustain any firm like ours [in terms of referrals],” one AZB lawyer summed up eloquently last week.

Exclusive: AZB & Partners and Clifford Chance broke off their best friend relationship yesterday night to become “good friends” after both firms saw fewer referrals than expected and legal market liberalisation became more unlikely than when they first entered into the relationship two years ago.

Start-up firm Axon Partners LLP has closed nearly a year restructuring roughly $2bn of debt of steel producer Jindal Stainless (JSL), with Amarchand Mangaldas and Clifford Chance jointly advising a variety of lending banks.

After a long slumber, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) fired its first warning shot across the bow of corporate India this week, allegedly slapping Kingfisher Airlines with a maximum fine of Rs 1 crore for not having played along with investigations.

Clifford Chance India head Chris Wyman has retired from the law after spending 16 months on secondment at the offices of Indian best friend AZB & Partners. Clifford Chance Singapore office head Geraint Hughes will succeed Wyman as India practice head.

Khaitan & Co has hired its second full-time banking partner, with former Clifford Chance London and Singapore senior associate Devidas Banerji joining in Mumbai.

Clifford Chance

senior partner Stuart Popham recounts his UK ministerial visit to India last month, which included Ambani, best friends and mile-high parties, as first published by the UK’s The Lawyer magazine.

Clifford Chance expects to have an office in India by late 2012 said the firm’s senior partner Stuart Popham, vowing to keep pushing the liberalisation agenda in India despite a lack of “overnight” results during his visit as part of the UK prime minister’s delegation.

Clifford Chance senior partner Stuart Popham is the law firm representative on British prime minister David Cameron’s India delegation this week, representing the UK legal and financial professional services community as head of a new trade body.

Luthra & Luthra’s capital markets practice has increased its leverage structure with the hire of its alumni Indraneel Basu Majumdar as a managing associate on “partnership track” from Clifford Chance.

Friday’s Mumbai Income Appellate Tax Tribunal (ITAT) ruling against Linklaters makes potentially all overseas professional services and law firms subject to income tax in India for the last six years or more if their staff visit India for 90 days in aggregate per year. The repercussions could be serious, according to Indian tax lawyers.

A Mumbai Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) has found that Linklaters should pay income tax in India on all India-related profits after applying a retrospective Finance Bill 2010 amendment to section 9(1) of the Income Tax Act, going against the latest decision in the Clifford Chance tax battle that is currently in the Indian Supreme Court.

Clifford Chance has again hired a legal “consultant” from its Gurgaon-based captive legal process outsourcing (LPO) centre OSC Export Services as a lawyer into the main firm.

Amarchand Mangaldas was the busiest IPO law firm in Legally India’s 2009-10 financial year (FY) league table by far but the newer practices Luthra & Luthra, S&R Associates, AZB & Partners and Khaitan & Co have managed to keep pace in bank advisory work bagging nearly as many instructions.

Citi India has hired former GE Capital India general counsel (GC) Sandip Beri as Citi India head legal and Clifford Chance senior associate Munish Nagpal as head legal of Citigroup Global Markets India.

Clifford Chance has promoted Indian passport holder and India-practice senior associate Sumesh Sawhney to partner in London.

The top eight law schools in the Mooting Premier League (MPL) will share a prize pool of Rs 1.5 lakhs, which has been kindly provided by the MPL’s new sponsor Clifford Chance.

Khaitan & Co has picked up the Indian mandate to advise private equity group Intermediate Capital Group (ICG) on the $440m purchase of legal process outsourcing company CPA Global, alongside a raft of international firms.