Zia Mody is India’s pre-eminent corporate lawyer. In spite of working in the fast-paced, frenzied deal-making environment for decades, her eyes light up with enthusiasm as she speaks about two of the biggest corporate deals she has worked on in the preceding year—Air India disinvestment and merger of HDFC and HDFC Bank. “Both have been prestigious, certainly the opportunities to serve the Tatas in what was a difficult process,” says Mody.
Mody is equally excited about the HDFC transaction. “It was the largest bank, non-bank merger since the Lehman days,” she adds.
One area where the firm has been rapidly expanding is renewables. “Everybody is looking to invest in India in this space, and we’re happy that we have done a lot of deals for them,” says Mody. AZB represented Blackrock when it invested ₹4,000 crore in Tata Power and Shell when it bought Sprng Energy. AZB had a few deals in the pipeline when the market was hit by downturn. “The pipeline isn’t as strong as it was last year, but with disenchantment towards China, eyeballs will be on India instead,” she says. — Rishi Kant