The formidable AZB & Partners has a seasoned and respected dispute resolution team comprising some of the leading practitioners in the market. The firm has offices in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, with no less than 16 disputes partners covering the full range of practice areas. Its core strength is corporate disputes, stemming from its top-tier M&A, competition and private equity transactional practices. Increasingly, clients are generated by the disputes team independent of the firm’s other transactional areas. Arbitration is another key strength for the team: it played leading roles in landmark decisions that have sculpted the domestic arbitration landscape. Recently, the firm has expanded into emerging areas of practice – for example, handling disputes in new technology areas such as high-frequency trading technology, fintech, privacy and technology regulation. It has been gaining experience also in third-party litigation and arbitration. This year the firm moved into the top tiers in the construction, international arbitration and white-collar crime rankings.
Noted partners include Rajendra Barot, Vijayendra Pratap Singh, Aditya Vikram Bhat, Roopali Singh, Kamal Shankar, Anindita Roychowdhury and Priyanka Shetty. Market legend and rainmaker Zia Mody specialises in commercial litigation and arbitration, regulatory and white-collar crime.
The team is representing BSR and Associates and its partner in special leave petitions filed by the Union of India and the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO). The client challenged the actions taken by the government the SFIO in connection with its sole joint audit of IL&FS Financial Services for the financial year that ended in 2018. In another high-stakes matter, the team is defending a majority shareholder and its company against allegations of oppression and mismanagement and other connected litigations. The case involves complex issues of determining whether oppression and mismanagement disputes are arbitrable or not. In this matter, the AZB team will apply a legal test to determine when a shareholder dispute can be reduced to a contractual dispute that is arbitrable, and when a claim of oppression is maintainable.
Another marquee litigation has the team championing Amazon.com for its international arbitration against the Future Group. The case spotlights the first Emergency Award under Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) arbitration enforced in India. The matter involved various issues inter alia, legal status of an emergency arbitrator and its order, validity of incorporating institutional rules that provide for emergency arbitration while the governing law is silent on the issue, the doctrine of group of companies and non-signatory as a party to an arbitration. The Supreme Court has upheld the validity of the Emergency Award. The verdict of the land’s top court has altered India’s arbitration landscape as the determination of validity and the legal status of emergency arbitration is a first of a kind and a landmark judgment in the Indian arbitration jurisprudence, with far-reaching effects internationally.
The AZB team continues to assist HSBC in the enforcement proceedings of an SIAC award before the High Court of Bombay, proceedings for interim reliefs and the contempt proceedings before the Supreme Court of India. The SIAC award grants HSBC’s claim of $60 million against Avitel Post Studioz and its promoters. The enforcement proceedings have been resisted by the counterparty,
inter alia, on grounds of the inarbitrability of issues settled by the arbitral tribunal, violation of the principles of natural justice, a bias of members of the arbitral tribunal, and on the grounds that the enforcement of the SIAC award would violate the public policy of India. This Supreme Court decision on the critical issue of fraud and arbitrability is a landmark arbitration-related judgment.
The firm has some of the corporate world’s biggest stars as loyal disputes clients, such as Amazon, Facebook, Credit Suisse, IHH Healthcare, HSBC, KKR, KPMG, Nissan Motors, Standard Chartered and Tata Steel. Recent clients include Aapico Hitech, Ambuja Cements, Cloudtail India, Solar Industries India and WNS Care Foundation.
Client feedback
“The firm’s partners spend a lot of time understanding the case in detail, going through the minutest intricacies, and then recommending an overarching strategy to the client. This may also include taking the advice of third-party experts, which may fall on the borderline of legal experts. So, while many other law firms or partners may be hesitant to recommend third parties to the clients, the partner handling our case in particular is very confident in her dealings and does not suffer any insecurity. She would advise what’s best in the client’s interest. And the best part is that the firm would stand beside her.” – International arbitration
Rajendra Barot
“He has great knowledge and experience, gives practical advice, is super-responsive and leads a great team.”
Roopali Singh
“She is very dedicated. She works extra hard to understand the client’s side, the business and the industry, and the specific circumstances of the case. In our case, she was at the forefront of framing the entire legal strategy around the case, encompassing several geographies (India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sri Lanka) and several areas (criminal breach of trust, international arbitration, IP infringement) as a partner to our in-house legal team. As an important stakeholder, I felt as comfortable talking to Roopali as to my in-house legal head.”
