AZB Clifford Chance breakaway Conversation with Bahram Vakil and CC insider

The AZB – Clifford Chance breakaway was officially announced on Friday, January 21, 2011. Bar & Bench digs into the “best friends” relation which lasted for two years, questions the reasoning behind the breakaway and acquires answers from both, AZB and Clifford Chance..The AZB – Clifford Chance breakaway was officially announced on Friday, January 21, 2011. Bar & Bench digs into the “best friends” relation which lasted for two years, questions the reasoning behind the breakaway and acquires answers from both, AZB and Clifford Chance..Bar & Bench speaks with Bahram Vakil, Senior Partner at AZB & Partners on the reason behind the break-up with Clifford Chance, a Best Friends relation which lasted for two years..Bahram Vakil: “There are two reasons for this breakaway. One, when we got into this relationship two years ago, both of us especially Clifford Chance was (and all the London law firms were) very optimistic about the opening up of the legal market in India. We also felt that the market will open, although we were not as optimistic as them. They had been promised within 6 months, but we thought at that time that within 1-2 years the market will definitely open up. Now in fact we are both very pessimistic that within this Governments reign it’s certainly not going to happen, and personally I’m not even sure with the next Government. My best guess would be at least 5 years down the line”..“Secondly, there were difficult years globally and both of us were very surprised and disappointed at the amount of work we got cross-border, from us to Clifford Chance and vice-versa. Unfortunately for whatever reasons we can’t explain, we didn’t do that much work with each other and therefore it made sense to be able to go back to working with other friends around the world and maintaining a close friendship which we established (with Clifford Chance) over the last two years”..Speaking on the implications of the break-up with Clifford Chance, Bahram said, “No implications as such other than that now we will be working with all law firms across the world and of course at the same time we will maintain our close friendship because on a personal level, individually, firm to firm we had a very good relationship”..On attracting talent and containing attrition at AZB, Bahram said, “We are certainly taking measures to attract more talent because we are very optimistic about the future. We are doing our best to get the right talent across all levels. In terms of attrition, there was a period when we lost some associates and also one partner, but the last quarter has been fine by god’s grace and I think it’s – so far so good”..Bahram also added to say that AZB is not looking at other best friends, the intentions are clear and idea is just to have good friends across the globe..Bar & Bench spoke with an insider at Clifford Chance who was at the helm of the matter, during the breakaway proceedings..Clifford Chance: At present, Clifford Chance is not looking for another way to reach out to India through a new Best Friend. An anonymous insider from Clifford Chance spoke with us about the break-up and said, “We have decided jointly with AZB to bring to an end our formal ‘best friends’ relationship. With liberalisation in India far from imminent this will allow each of us greater freedom of manoeuvre”..Speaking on the implications of this break-up of best friends relations with AZB, India said, “From a client point of view, we don’t expect this to have any effect. The best friends agreement always anticipated that we would work with other law firms where the client had a preference, and that has been the case throughout. We expect that we will continue to work regularly with AZB as good friends and as both firms feel that the relationship has brought us some important benefits”..“Clifford Chance remains very committed to the dynamic Indian market and will continue to invest in our ability to support our clients on India related matters. For example: Our Equity Capital Markets Unit in our Singapore office has now been in operation for two years and has been well received by clients. We have a team of eight there, including two partners, Ed Bradley and Rahul Guptan, who have handled a wide range of transactions, under international law, including convertible bonds, IPOs and listings of Indian companies since it was established and continues to build ever stronger relationships in the market. Also, following Sumesh Sawhney’s election as Partner last year, we continue to build further our outbound India M & A credentials and to add value for inbound and outbound India work”..“We will also continue to develop further our established India-related Finance, Private Funds, Energy and Infrastructure and Dispute Resolution capabilities. We already have more than 40 Indian lawyers in the firm, including two Partners (Sumesh and Rahul) and will continue to recruit high quality Indian qualified talent”..On being questioned about the ongoing foreign law firm case in India, having an impact on the best friends relation, the person said, “No – although this could be taken as a further indication of how far there is yet to go on liberalization of the Indian legal market”.