Indian firm Trilegal has hired a team of eight corporate partners from local rival Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas (SAM) to strengthen its M&A team.

The eight partners include Amit Khansaheb, Vishruta Kaul, Nikhil Sachdeva, Rishi Jain, Abhishek Dubey, Rahul Chugh, Prateek Lala and Pratyush Singh, with everyone but Lala set to join the firm’s Gurugram office. Lala will join in Bengaluru.

Their arrival boosts the number of partners at Trilegal, which has an all-equity partnership model, to 101.

Nishant Parikh, partner and member of the firm’s management committee, said: “We are excited to invite lawyers of such high calibre and strong reputations to join us. Trilegal’s corporate practice is one of the strongest in the country and the addition of this team allows us to grow it further in very interesting directions.”

Khansaheb brings with him more than 25 years of experience specialising in M&A transactions and other general corporate matters, most recently spending almost six years at SAM and more than four years at BMR Legal before that, where he helped set up its corporate M&A practice.

Kaul has more than 14 years of experience in domestic and cross-border M&A, as well as corporate governance work. She also previously spent around six years at SAM having been a member of Khansaheb’s team at BMR Legal. She started her career at Desai & Diwanji.

M&A and private equity lawyers Sachdeva, Jain and Dubey were also part of the BMR team that moved over to SAM. Sachdeva previously had stints at J. Sagar Associates, Desai & Diwanji and A&M Law Offices; Jain previously worked for Desai & Diwanji and Zeus Law Associates; and Dubey was at Amarchand & Mangaldas & Suresh A Shroff & Co and P&A Law Offices.

Chugh brings with him 13 years of transactional and general corporate experience, spanning his time at SAM and BMR, while also spending two years as a litigator at the Indian supreme court. Lala has 12 years of M&A and private equity experience at SAM and BMR, as well as stints at the ThemisGroup and Lexygen. Singh, meantime, brings almost a decade of corporate law experience gained at SAM, BMR and Acuity Law.

The team’s arrival takes the number of Trilegal partner hires over the past year to 33 – 18 of them in the corporate practice. 

Trilegal — one of India’s top ranked M&A firms, alongside SAM — was founded in 2000 and has offices in Bangalore, Mumbai, New Delhi and Gurgaon. 

Last August, its UK relationship firm, Allen & Overy, hired co-head of corporate Harsh Pais to lead its India corporate practice from London.

In a historic move last month, the Bar Council of India agreed to allow the establishment of foreign lawyers and law firms in India, although some commentators are predicting a long wait before the new regime comes into force.