AZB, DSK and Trilegal have done well in Asia Pacific private equity deal rankings despite heavily depressed values and volumes this year.

Khaitan & Co scored the Mahindra Holidays & Resorts listing in Mumbai, which netted the Mahindra Group around Rs. 275 crore over the past month and to many investors signalled a temporary end to the initial public offering (IPO) drought.

Amarchand Mangaldas, Khaitan & Co and Jones Day have advised on India’s largest initial public offer (IPO) in 18 months for Adani Power’s issue, which has so far seen four-fold oversubscription and is hoped to raise between Rs 2,700 and 3,000 crore ($558m to $620m).

Khaitan & Co will take a lawyer from UK international firm Eversheds on a three-month secondment in September, reported The Lawyer.

Despite meagre pickings, Desai & Diwanji, Khaitan & Co, AZB & Partners and Amarchand Mangaldas have topped an M&A league table, together advising on 30 Indian deals worth a total of $9.4bn in the last six months.

Khaitan & Co has made up a former PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) chartered accountant-cum-lawyer to partner.

Sanjay Sanghvi (pictured) only qualified as a lawyer after joining Khaitan in January 2008 from PwC. He is the third new member to the law firm’s partnership in as many months.

He said that working in a law firm was very satisfying: “In accountancy firms you typically do compliance work and you don’t go deeper into the law and interpretation.

FoxMandal Little has hired a partner to head its New Delhi intellectual property (IP) practice of three lawyers.

Vinay Dwarkadas joined from Khaitan & Co’s Mumbai office where he was a senior associate.

Dwarkadas (pictured) said that he hoped to greatly expand the existing IP practice at FoxMandal: “I have to be its backbone and want to take it forward for years to come. I plan to be here for a long time.”

Khaitan & Co has continued its aggressive lateral hiring strategy, taking partner Prabjot Singh Bhullar from AZB & Partners.

Bhullar (pictured) was based in AZB’s Mumbai office but will relocate to Delhi, where he will significantly bolster Khaitan’s infrastructure and projects capacity.

Khaitan partner Rabindra Jhunjhunwala said that the firm was keen to expand in infrastructure and tax, in order to improve cross selling opportunities to the firm’s domestic clients.

Khaitan & Co has hired senior associate Bharat Anand from UK magic circle firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.