The demand is so high that in certain cases, law firms are willing to hire at a partner level even without having a sizable book or give a cushion of almost one year of ‘no targets’, talent search professionals told ET.
“The highly charged IPO frenzy in the market and the resulting high demand for specialist capital markets lawyers are seeing both capacity building among seasoned teams as well as newer firms setting up this practice through inorganic hiring or practice acquisitions,” said Lee Ignatius, cofounder and partner at specialist search firm Vahura.
He said this is the highest demand for capital market specialist lawyers in the last decade. “In certain cases, firms are willing to hire a sector specialist with a softer landing, keeping a long-term strategic play in mind,” he added.
Vahura is working on a few strategic mandates for firms for their capital market practice hiring, Lee said.
Many capital market specialist lawyers have switched jobs in recent weeks.
Last month, Geeta Dhania and Prashaant Vikram Rajput joined Economic Laws Practice (ELP) as capital markets partners from Luthra & Luthra Law Office while Talwar Thakore & Associates (TT&A) announced the joining of Abhinav Kumar as a partner in its capital markets practice from Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM).
Before that, Manan Lahoty joined CAM as partner and head of capital markets practice, along with a 48-member team of eight partners and 40 associates, from rival firm IndusLaw.
In July, Trilegal roped in Vijay Parthasarathi and Vinay Sirohia from CAM to join its capital markets practice.
Premal Shah, founder of boutique executive search firm FCL Search, said that amid the rush of IPOs and QIPs (qualified institutional placements), “even firms that traditionally didn’t have capital markets offerings are pursuing a defensive capital market strategy by hiring partners or teams to service their internal clients.”
He said FCL Search is working on a couple of mandates to hire for this practice.
The IPO frenzy has led to a spike in the cost of hiring legal advisors for maiden issues.
“The cost of hiring law firms for an IPO is in the range of Rs 80 lakh to Rs 2 crore, depending upon the complexity and size of the businesses,” said Chirag M. Shah, an independent advocate practicing in the capital markets. “These rates have doubled in last three years.”
Srishti Ojha, founder of Verist Law, said, “It is important to be very careful of who one onboards for long-gestation cycle work like capital markets.”
As per the publicly available data, till the end of August, about 50 companies have raised a total of Rs 53,453 crore via IPOs this calendar year. In September, about 10 companies were set to get listed to raise about Rs 11,300 crore.
In comparison, in the whole of 2023, 57 companies had launched IPOs to raise Rs 49,436 crore.