Bharat Vasani

Bharat Vasani is a startup investor in Mumbai. Bharat Vasani is the Chief Legal and Group General Counsel of Tata Sons Ltd, the holding company of Tata Group. Bharat heads the legal function for the Group and is an important member of the senior management team of the Tata Group. Bharat has over 30 years of experience at senior management level in the corporate legal function and his keyresponsibilities include Mergers & Acquisitions (both domestic and cross-border), corporate restructuring, JVs, foreign collaborations, divestments, major commercial contracts, civil and criminal litigation, property matters and all legal and regulatory issues. Bharat has also extensive expertise on foreign investment and FEMA Regulations both for in-bound and out-bound investments. Bharat has extensive experience in handling complex commercial negotiations and has sound domain knowledge of various corporate laws. Bharat Vasani is currently on the boards of Rallis India, Tata Sky, Tata Capital Markets, Tata Communications, Tata Motors Finance. Bharat is also the Chairman of the Legal Affairs Committee of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry for the last 4 years and member of CII and the Regulatory Affairs Committee and Co-Chairman of the FICCI Corporate Law Committee. Bharat has worked closely with several expert committees of the Government on the reform of Company Law and Competition Law. Prior to joining the Tata Group, Bharat was the Vice President – Legal in The Dow Chemical International Co. Ltd responsible for South Asia and South East Asia. During this period, he was responsible for all legal matters of India, Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Prior to joining Dow, Bharat Vasani worked for 15 years with NOCIL, a joint venture between Shell and Mafatlal, engaged in the business of Petrochemicals and Agro Chemicals and headed the legal function for the last 5 years. Bharat displays passion for ensuring higher standards of corporate governance and adheres to responsible and ethical conduct in all aspects of business operations. Bharat is recognized in the legal profession for his technical skills and also several lectures and presentations he has made at different forums including several television interviews on CNBC and other channels. Bharat is also a prolific writer and has written several articles on various aspects of corporate law and governance. Bharat Vasani has given several presentations at international forums on cross-border acquisitions, negotiation of JVs, Insider Trading, Takeover Code and Competition Law. Bharat has strong domain knowledge of various corporate laws of India and also has sound working knowledge of laws of different jurisdictions including England, Delaware and European Union. Bharat has extensively travelled abroad for various assignments and has sound understanding of the laws and practices in different jurisdictions of the world. Bharat’s areas of specialization include, corporate and commercial law, securities law, capital market transactions, M&As, JVAs, Competition Law, Employment Law and direct and indirect tax laws and property matters. In 2010, Bharat won the IFLR Award for the Outstanding Achievement as the Tata Group General Counsel. Bharat holds a First Class Bachelor's degree in Commerce and First Class First Bachelor's degree in Law from the Mumbai University. Bharat is also a member of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India and was awarded the President’s Medal for securing the First Rank in the Company Secretaries examination. Bharat has also undergone several intensive training programmes in law and general management during his tenure with NOCIL, Dow Chemical and Tata, including the prestigious M&A training course at the Harvard Business School, Boston.