Economic Laws Practice (ELP) has boosted its private equity and corporate practice with the hire of ARA Law partner Darshan Upadhyay under the new associate partner designation, which reduces the size of ARA’s partnership to one.
Upadhyay had been at ARA Law’s Mumbai office for more than five years and specialises in private equity. He qualified as a lawyer in 2005 at KC Law College Mumbai, having worked at Thakker & Thakker after qualifying as a company secretary in 2000.
He said that he would be focusing on advising funds and companies in the private equity space, as well as mainstream corporate work. “ELP came up with a good opportunity for me and I wanted to concentrate on the private equity and M&A practice.â€
ELP Mumbai partner and head of private equity and corporate, Suhail Nathani said that the private equity team between Mumbai and Delhi was now around 15 lawyers strong.
Associate partner Yashojit Mitra, who was promoted to the newly introduced career rung in May of this year, will be the only full-time private equity and M&A partner alongside Upadhyay. The rest of the team consists of a number of core members and a number of lawyers who also work in other practice areas.
Following Upadhyay’s departure, ARA Law’s partnership now consists only of the firm’s founding partner Rajesh Begur. The firm hired Kanga & Co partner Ashish Bhakta in August, who is understood to have since left after less than two months at the firm. Bhakta was not immediately reachable for comment at the this time.
Begur commented that despite decreased partnership things were going well at ARA. “We have been actively recruiting and have people joining in the next several weeks now,†he said.
(The article is reproduced with permission from Legallyindia.com)
