Khaitan & Co and Clifford Chance Hong Kong advised HSBC’s Hong Kong branch on its $30m term loan facility to the State Bank of India’s Shanghai branch for general corporate purposes. Khaitan banking partner Devidas Banerji (who joined the firm from CC in 2010 ) and Clifford Chance partner Matth...

Answer: It depends (but nine is magic number)

The markets are picking up it looks like – here’s the round-up of what firms have been getting up to.

Khaitan & Co and Mulla & Mulla have served defamation notices on behalf of members of the Reliance family on authors of the book Gas Wars, who are defended by Amicus Juris.

Former KPMG partner Gautam Chemburkar joined Khaitan & Co as its first ever executive director strategy on 3 April.

Khaitan & Co has increased fresher salaries to Rs 15.2 lakh per annum, including bonus, effective from 1 April as part of its annual pay hike.

Khaitan & Co Mumbai capital markets partner of six years Vibhava Sawant left the firm on 11 April to relocate to Abu Dhabi to be with family.

NUJS Kolkata’s 2015 graduating batch has accepted 27 job offers across seven firms with a mix of 16 so-called Day Zero offers made after interviews on campus on April 16 and 11 pre-placement offers (PPOs) made after internships to students.

NLU Delhi’s third batch, that will graduate in 2015 has already placed 10 students with confirmed jobs after its Day Zero of recruitment on 4 April, with four offers subject to internships and three vacation placements with foreign firms.

Traditional NLU Jodhpur recruiters Amarchand Mangaldas, Luthra & Luthra and Trilegal hit campus again on 2 April, in addition to Khaitan & Co, to make 12 job offers to the class graduating in 2015.

AZB, Trilegal and Luthra had the biggest reported deals in the first quarter of the year, which was a bit of a let down compared to the first quarter of 2014 but is looking up.

NLSIU Bangalore’s 2015-graduating batch, which is currently finishing its fourth year of their five-year degree, has placed 33 students after its first day of on-campus recruitment with a mix of PPOs and Day Zero offers.

Khaitan & Co has promoted 10 lawyers to principal associate level and 27 to senior associate, in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata.

Vaishali Sharma, the Khaitan & Co lateral partner who left the firm last week, has now hired three associates and won her first instructions.

Khaitan & Co hired two salaried partners and one counsel, with nine years of experience, in its capital markets and the energy and infrastructure practices across Delhi and Mumbai.

Khaitan & Co has promoted two Mumbai salaried partners - Adheesh Nargolkar and Raj Panchmatia - to equity partnership, and 11 principal associates to salaried partner.

Khaitan & Co partner Vaishali Sharma, who joined in 2010 from AZB & Partners, has quit the firm.

Khaitan & Co advised Indian online fashion shop Koovs on its Rs 224.5 cr listing on the London Stock Exchange’s smaller cousin, with English law firms Osborne Clarke, Foot Anstey and Macfarlanes.

Litigation, corporate, M&A, capital markets and private equity deals in brief from a cross-section of India’s top law firms.

Independent directors, many of whom are also partners in law firms, will have to resign from the boards of several companies after the Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) last week capped the number of directorships a person can hold to seven.