AZB, S&R, Bharucha, NDA lead on Indus Towers – Bharti Infratel Mega Merger

Bharti Infratel is merging its operations with Indus Towers that has Vodafone and Idea Cellular as stakeholders to create a $14.6 billion company which will be one of the largest mobile tower entities worldwide with 1.63 lakh towers..Indus Towers is currently jointly owned by Bharti Infratel (42%), Vodafone (42%), Aditya Birla’s Idea group (11.15%) and Providence (4.85%), reported ET..AZB & Partners along with Bharti in-house team advised Bharti Infratel. The AZB team was led by Corporate Partners Gautam Saha, Amrita Patnaik, and Sachin Mehta along with Senior Associate Punita Gupta and Associate Harshit Chandra..AZB Managing Partner Ajay Bahl along with Partner Ravi Prakash advised on tax structuring..Partner Abhinav Ashwin along with Counsel Bharat Apte advised on Scheme issues. Partner Samir Gandhi advised on competition law aspect..The Bharti in-house team included Vidyut Gulati, Director – Legal along with Sumi Saikia and Niranjan Raj..S&R Associates Partners Rajat Sethi, Radhika Iyer, and Tanya Aggarwal along with Shivaji Bhattacharya, Dhruv Nath, Jagriti Mohata, Raya Hazarika, Meher Mehta, Sushmita Sur and Apoorv Chaturvedi acted for Vodafone. Simran Dhir, Dhruv Agarwal, and Natasha Aggarwal advised on competition law aspect..Slaughter and May acted as international counsel and the team included Partner Murray Cox and Associate Raghav Ghai..Vodafone in-house Counsel Gareth Morgan also advised along with the two firms..Bharucha & Partners advised Idea and the team was led by Partner Alka Bharucha along with Senior Associate Ayesha Bharucha and Swathi Girimaji..Nishith Desai Associates advised providence and the team was led by Partners Vaibhav Parikh, Simone Reis, and Rajesh Simhan..Both Airtel and Vodafone are to be joint promoters of the new company.