Lex Witness successfully completed its 3rd Annual In-House Counsel Summit Series covering 3 cities over a span of 30 days. With over 70 Speakers, 300 Delegates & 34 Hours of igniting discussions, the series concluded with an insight into the various undercurrents of the Indian Legal Fraternity. Here’s reminiscence through a visual gallery that lets you through the summits at New Delhi, Bengaluru & Mumbai.
Shyam Grover, Group Editor & CEO, Lex Witness
Dr. Lalit Bhasin, President, The Society of Indian Law Firms
Chad Sluss, Senior Vice President of Services, International, Society of Primerus Law Firms
Amitabh Lal Das, Director & Head – Legal, Compliance & Regulatory, Max Life Insurance Company Limited
Debolina Partap, Vice President Legal & General Counsel, Wockhardt Group
The global business scenarios have been going through a lot of changes in terms of governance, business roadmaps, regulatory ambience and of course consumer behaviours. This has not only led to a need of relevant change in the way India Inc. has been operating so far but also a need to adapt to the requisite organics in the leadership community. So right from the liberalization of the Indian legal fraternity to a multi-disciplinary role a general counsel is ‘expected’ to play today, the panel discussed out loud the inevitable set of discussions for a 21st Century General Counsel.
Amitabh Lal Das, Director & Head – Legal, Compliance & Regulatory, Max Life Insurance – MODERATOR
Badrinath Durvasula, Senior Vice President Legal, Adani Group
Jayashree Swaminathan, Director, Dhir & Dhir Associates
Jogy P Thomas, CEO, ATS Infrastructure
Saikrishna Rajagopal, Managing Partner, Saikrishna & Associates
Ketan Mukhija, Senior VP (Legal, Corporate Strategy and Planning), SREI Group – MODERATOR
Alok Dhir, Founder & Managing Partner, Dhir & Dhir Associates
Biren Ghose, Country Head, Technicolor India
Manish Kumar, General Counsel, Zoomcar.com
Naresh Arora, Vice President and Head – Legal & Regulatory, Viom Networks
Vasanthika Srinath, Vice President & General Counsel, The Minacs Group
Vijayalakshmi Natarajan, Director, Legal-India & Asia Pacific Region, HARMAN International
Debolina Partap, Vice President and Head Legal, Wockhardt Group – MODERATOR
Atul Dua, Founder & Senior Partner, Seth Dua & Associates
Rajiv Mohapatra, Head Legal, Vodafone M-Pesa
Selwyn Black, Partner, Carroll & O’Dea Lawyers
Sheetal Sawhney Kapur, Director, Head Legal & Regulatory, PayU Payments
The Regulatory Regimes have always been a premise of the legal fraternity to plan and implement their legal strategies both inside and outside the court. The air of confusion and the quest to reach a stable approach is a never go wrong mission that the community is striving towards. How important is it for a General Counsel to ensure a smooth interplay between the organization and the regulatory ambience globally? How does one manage an error free strategy to handle it all? An overview of the key regulatory changes and updates that India Inc. is witnessing.
Sameer Chugh, Director – Legal & Regulatory, Bharti Airtel – MODERATOR
Badrinath Durvasula, Senior Vice President Legal, Adani Group
Hardeep Sachdeva, Senior Partner, AZB & Partners
Indranil Choudhury, Chief Executive Officer, Lexplosion Solutions
Kapil Chaudhary, Corporate Counsel, India & SAARC, Autodesk India
Nikhil Sahni, Partner, Saikrishna & Associates
Nilesh Sharma, Senior Partner, Dhir & Dhir Associates
Yogesh Wadhwa, General Counsel, General Motors India
Mukundan Bharathan, Regional General Counsel – India & Europe, Dr. Reddy’s Labs – MODERATOR
Avik Biswas, Partner, IndusLaw
Dattatri HM, Head – Legal & Secretarial, Essilor India
R Hiranmai, Executive Director & General Counsel – APAC Legal Counsel, Cushman & Wakefield
Subodh Prasad Deo, Partner, Saikrishna & Associates
The menace of the continuing global economic meltdown has caught the Indian businesses also; as a result majority of the industry is reeling under severe financial crisis, consequently leading to defaults in meeting their obligations towards its creditors resulting in locking up of investible funds of banks/FIs, and the mounting Non Performing Assets of the Banks/FIs. The need of the hour is to have robust framework in place to enable the creditors to effectively re-structure the debt to preserve the economic value of a viable entity in distress or unlock value in the unviable ones by early liquidation of the same to minimize the losses to creditors and stakeholders. Several mechanisms are already in place but the extent to which the same have been effective in achieving the desired results, has always been a topic of debate. Several new initiatives have been taken by the Government and the RBI to address the prevailing crisis situation and the way forward. The panel focused on discussing the several `Existing and new rules of the Game’.
Rajeev Uberoi, General Counsel & Head – Legal & Audit, IDFC Bank – MODERATOR
Alok Dhir, Founder & Managing Partner, Dhir & Dhir Associates
Damini Marwah, General Counsel and Legal Head, IL&FS Financial Services
Kshitij Sancheti, Partner, Seth Dua & Associates
SS Naganand, Senior Partner, JustLaw
Time and again, there were debates on how important it is to protect a mastery of innovation or a creation of any sort. Industry sectors across have learnt and realized this in their own sweet ways and have started implementing it through the best available legal advisory. However, along with the change in the IPR inferences at various situations, there is a rise of complications of various sorts. Right from patents to trademarks, the IPR bandwidth has entered into an all new frequency where an appropriate legal advisory has become an inevitable check point. Have the external counsel in this domain managed to gauge the GCs’ minds? Do the GCs today find it as critical as other legal dimensions? A debate cum discussion on various cross industry IPR related aspects;
Lakshika Joshi, General Counsel and Head – IP Licensing, Nucleus Software – MODERATOR
Ameet Datta, Partner, Saikrishna & Associates
Rajiv Jha, CS & DGM – Legal, Xerox India
Rajiv Chauhan, General Counsel, Pernod Ricard
Arshad Jamil, GM-IPR, Biocon – MODERATOR
J. Sai Deepak, Associate Partner, Saikrishna & Associates
Karma Bhutia, Legal Counsel, General Motors
Manish Kumar, Corporate Quality-Audits, Assessments and Certifications, Infosys
S.K. Murthy, Patent Counsel, Intel India
Rajarshi Chakrabarti, Vice President, Corporate Legal, Bennett, Coleman & Co. – MODERATOR
Dr. Ashwini Sandu, Global Head IPR, UPL
J. Sai Deepak, Associate Partner, Saikrishna & Associates
Selwyn Black, Partner, Carroll & O’Dea Lawyers
SS Naganand, Senior Partner, JustLaw
India was ranked 178 out of 189 nations in terms of enforcing contract by the World Bank’s ease of doing business report, 2016. It is high time that urgent steps are taken to facilitate quick enforcement of contracts, easy recovery of monetary claims and award of just compensation for damages to encourage investment and economic activity. Finally, The Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Ordinance, 2015 got promulgated and there has been a sigh of relief ‘so far’. Has the Ordinance been able to streamline processes and steps that could bring in significant difference in delivery of results and secure the very idea of arbitration? Amidst mixed opinions in the industry, the session aimed at clearing the air and identifying what and how will this paradigm shift affect the legal wireframes.
Pulin Kumar, Group Sr. Legal & Compliance Director, Adidas Group – MODERATOR
Dr. Sunil Mittal, Group General Counsel, Kalpataru Group
Jasmeet Wadehra, Head – Legal, Power, Vedanta Group
Jugnu Bagga, Head – Legal, Paras Buildtech India
S. Ravi Shankar, Senior Partner, Law Senate
Contracts have always been a major thumbprint for arising litigation complexities. A proactive approach than a reactive one is something that a GC always aspires through the legal batteries in place. Whether the in house team or the external counsel, contracts are referred to as business/litigation statements and hence are of immense importance from that perspective. Irrespective of the industry sector, the art of contracting is one of the many inevitable for a successful lawyer as well as a GC and its team members. The session encapsulates various aspects around the legal aspects around contracts.
Pujarini Maulik, Practice Counsel, Head of Contracts & Disputes, InMobi -MODERATOR
Ketan Mukhija, Senior Vice President (Legal, Corporate Strategy and Planning), SREI Group
Mukundan Bharathan, Regional General Counsel – India and Europe, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories
Phani Mangipudi, Company Secretary & Head Legal, Agrotech Foods Ltd. (Conagra Foods USA)
Vinod Kumar B., Head Legal, Strides Shasun
Badrinath Durvasula, Senior Vice President Legal, Adani Group – MODERATOR
Eshwar Sabapathy, Partner, S Eshwar Consultants, House of Corporate & IPR Laws
Kiran Chitale, Vice President – Country Head of Legal, OT&C India, Barclays Technology Centre India
Monica Datta, Partner, Saikrishna & Associates
Murray N. Thornhill, Director & Notary Public, HHG Legal
Sanjay Kumar, Head Legal, Piramal Imaging SA
The India Inc. has seen various eras of governance with different magnitude and complexes. With times changes the need of creating strategic balances between governance, risk and compliance aspects. There seems to be a never ending effort towards identifying risks right from a preemptive approach or a post analysis. On the other hand, there a complex compliance grids that need to simplify down in terms of relevant compliances across industry sectors and adhered to without failure. The panel focused on various best practices that the industry would need to refer to in order to operate in an ethical compliance driven business environ.
Manish Gupta, General Counsel & Company Secretary, Usha International – MODERATOR
Anupam Sharan, Leadership – Contract Management, American Express
B. Sai Chandravadhan, Managing Director, Sand Legal Services
Pathik Arora, Assistant General Counsel & Company Secretary, InterGlobe Hotels
Ravi Prakash, Senior Partner, AZB & Partners
Shujath Bin Ali, Senior Legal Counsel & CS, International Paper – India – MODERATOR
Indranil Choudhury, Chief Executive Officer, Lexplosion Solutions
Jayashree Swaminathan, Director, Dhir & Dhir Associates
S Mahadevan, Executive VP – Legal Compliance & Risk Management, Hinduja Global Solutions
Subramanian Narayan, Vice President & Dy. Company Secretary, Mphasis
Badrinath Durvasula, Senior Vice President Legal, Adani Group – MODERATOR
Atul Dua, Founder & Senior Partner, Seth Dua & Associates
Indranil Choudhury, Chief Executive Officer, Lexplosion Solutions
Saurabh Malhotra, South Asia Compliance Officer, Syngenta India
Tony Hogarth, Partner, Mullins Lawyers
The Summit ended with an exiting luckydaw and the winners got Kindle as the grand prize of the day followed by Logitech Bluetooth and Philips Desktop Speakers as runner ups.
2nd Runner Ups were Soham Chaudhury, Lexplosion Solutions & Mikita Goel, PayU Payments
1st Runner Ups were Biju Thomas, PANINDIA LEGAL & Selwyn Black, Carroll & O’Dea Lawyers
Grand Prize Winners were Sandeep Agrawal, PwC & Geeta Durgapal, 9x Media
Awesome and enlighting experience with an insight view of general counsels.
It was a useful day spent with professionals.
The Grand Masters 2016, provides absolute opportunity to deliberate real-time issues from legal stand point apart from getting to know the legal brains spread across the country and outside.
Good floor to share experiences both from in-house and external counsel perspective.
Highly appreciate ! Relevant topics with practical insight.
Finally the lawyers have started speaking the truth, need to continue creating the forum for this.
Summit was informative with a wide coverage of current legal aspects.
The role of general counsel in today’s corporate world was beautifully explained by each of the speakers with clarity on requisites duties and responsibilities.
Ideal platform for exchange of thoughts pertaining to legal world.
I got an overall view as to what all is involved in being an in-house counsel.
The Grand Masters, 2016 was good for masters of legal fraternity.
Wonderful knowledge sharing, would love to attend future summits too.
A very nice enlightening experience. It has provided me a good opportunity for networking.
The Grand Masters Series as always has been one of the best General Counsel centric platforms and is much more sophisticated in terms of knowledge sharing.
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