Zia Mody: A Leading Light
Mody, Founder and Managing Partner of AZB & Partners, is a leading corporate attorney, known for her expertise in dealing with mergers and acquisitions (M&A), securities law, private equity and project finance. Most clients of her law firm see her as “one of India’s foremost corporate attorneys” who is a “problem solver”, “meticulous”, “thorough”, “result oriented” and “accessible”. Under her leadership, AZB & Partners has grown to be among the largest and most prestigious law firms in the country.
In a recent interview with BW Businessworld, Zia Mody said, “I think all our firms are doing well. Unfortunately pleasure or pain, we have clients. We’ve benefited a lot from the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) in terms of mandates and bidders representing resolution professionals and so, that is a piece of work that is growing.”
Incidentally, Zia Mody’s firm advised on the first successful closure and acquisition of Bhushan Steel under the new Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. She has also advised telecom major Airtel on its merger with the Telenor Group and Schneider Electric for the acquisition of Larsen & Toubro’s electric and automation business – two big corporate deals. She also advises large private equity houses including KKR, Bain Capital and Warburg Pincus. Mody has been recognised for her contribution to the legal world, both in India and internationally and has worked with G.E., the Tata Group, Reliance Industries, the Aditya Birla Group and the Vedanta Group.
“So in the M&A space, we closed some large deals. We represented L&T when they bought out Mindtree, we did work for Reliance when they sold the pipelines (business) to Brookefield, we did the private equity deal of KKR with Max. I guess these will be some of the bigger ones,” Mody said.
Mody was part of the expert committee on ‘Amendment to the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996’. She was a member of the Reserve Bank of India Committee on Comprehensive Financial Services for Small Businesses and Low-Income Households in 2013 and of the Godrej Committee on Corporate Governance set up by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (2012). She was a member of the World Bank Administrative Tribunal, Washington D.C. (2008-2013).
Zia Mody has a Master’s degree from the Harvard Law School. She passed the New York State Bar examination, and qualified as an attorney in the state of New York. She worked for five years with Baker & McKenzie in New York City, before starting her own practice in Mumbai in 1984.
‘Nobody was Willing to Bell the Cat’
Zia Mody tells BW Businessworld in an exclusive interview that regulatory uncertainty scare away investors from India
What could have been done better in the last decade or so to tackle the NPA crisis of NBFCs?
Broadly speaking what could have happened is that regulators could have taken the next step after identifying the red flags. If a red flag was noticed in the balance sheet of a systemic NBFC, rather than just saying these are ten red flags, was there a concerted follow up on what the outcome should be?
I think that nobody was willing to bell the cat – banks had to start calling out their bad loans. I think the good thing is, Raghuram Rajan forced the banks to sit in one room and that actually then led to concerted inter-creditor behaviour which was not there before. What could’ve happened in hindsight is that you could’ve dealt with banks with small exposures, not stifling the resolution of the larger pie. Promoters banked on the disunity of the creditors to achieve delay.
Now you know, in some cases the delay actually resolved problems, because it gave time to the system to start having money flowing again. If you ask borrowers, the real problem is that there is no time to ease money back into the system.
You have said that a lot of foreign investors are ready to invest dry powder but there are uncertainties. What are these uncertainties?
Regulatory uncertainty. For example, if you regulate hospitals – somebody buys a hospital and then the rules on pricing of drugs or medical devices are changed suddenly with an idea that hospitals should not make a profit. That spooks them. They have not come to do charity for India, they have come to see India as an investment destination. Insolvency and bankruptcy grew when it first started. If our private equity clients invest in the services sector where there is less government intervention, they are happy.
Mody was on the panel of the expert committee on ‘Amendment to the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996’, among other expert groups that have advised the government
