IFLR/Asialaw India Awards 2012: winners announced

The winners of this year’s IFLR/Asialaw India Awards have been announced. For all deal, team and firm of the year winners, please see below.

Almost 150 leading practitioners from all segments of India’s legal profession attended this year’s awards ceremony, which took place on Thursday July 5 at the Trident Hotel in Mumbai.

The Awards celebrated the recent achievements of India’s finest legal minds. The ceremony was particularly poignant this year as it comes during what has been described as a ‘rough patch’ for Asia’s third-largest economy. To support this prognosis, one need only consider the first quarter’s growth rate of 5.3%, which was the slowest recorded for nine years.

Then there’s the fact that fiscal and trade deficits are soaring, the rupee has fallen almost 25% against the US dollar in the past year, reforms are stalled due to a hesitant government, inflation is high and investment and consumption are down.

This has all led to the ratings agencies downgrading their outlook for the Indian economy, with Standard & Poor’s warning that India may lose its investment-grade status.

India’s economy is of course largely reliant on domestic demand, and while this has slowed, the confidence of foreign investors was certainly not helped by the recent debate over retroactive tax legislation.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel, and India’s legal profession has a vital role to play in ensuring that this light gets brighter.

For example, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has unveiled a series of projects to kickstart investment. These include plans to build new highways, airports and ports during this fiscal year – with much importance being given to public-private partnerships in order to help foot the bill.

And the limit on foreign investment in government bonds has been increased in an effort to prop up the rupee – with sovereign wealth funds, endowment funds, pension funds and foreign central banks all now permitted to invest in government bonds.

Although such measures will likely have limited impact in the short-term, the Prime Minister’s top economic adviser, C Rangarajan, was recently quoted as saying: “Although the correction will happen only when the capital flows come in ... the avenues have now been opened.”

IFLR and Asialaw will follow these developments with interest.

The IFLR awards are unique in only rewarding legal innovation on complex transactions. We don’t care about size, time or media attention. This is about legal invention and precedent.

IFLR and Asialaw contacted Indian and international law firms in early March with a request for submissions detailing innovative deals across a number of practice areas during 2011. Only deals that included a significant India element to them and that closed between January 1 2011 and December 31 2011 were eligible for inclusion. Confidential transactions and those that did not complete were not considered.

A full write-up of the 2012 IFLR/Asialaw India Awards will appear in IFLR and Asialaw’s annual India Review: a dedicated annual guide to legal developments in India, which will be published in September.

The full list of winners is listed below. For more information, please contact Simon King at simon.king@euromoneyasia.com.

IFLR/Asialaw India Awards 2012: winners announced

Author: IFLR Correspondent | Published: 9 Jul 2012

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