Chandni Chawla

Chandni Chawla is a Partner in the New Delhi office of Phoenix Legal and is part of the corporate practice group. Her primary practice area is Mergers and Acquisitions, and she focuses on foreign direct investments, M&As, joint ventures, restructuring, and general corporate and commercial matters.

She has significant experience advising foreign investors and multinational corporations on structuring and negotiating financial and strategic investments, M&A and joint venture transactions, and various related aspects of Indian commercial and company law across diverse sectors including automotive, aviation, e-commerce, chemicals, healthcare, information technology, manufacturing and power.

She advises clients on a wide range of issues involving anti-corruption, competition law, corporate governance, exchange control laws, data privacy and protection of personal information, and labour and employment. She also has experience in white-collar crimes and forensic and corporate internal investigations, and has advised several foreign companies on anti-corruption, anti-bribery issues, anti-money laundering and fraud investigations.

Her recent experience includes representing and advising Dell on the sale of its Boomi business by way of sale of shares of Boomi Inc. to Bayshore Holdings 2021 L.P., specifically assisting on the internal reorganisation involving hiving off Boomi's Indian business to a separate entity for transfer to the buyer. She also represented and advised Cooper Standard Automotive Inc. on the divestiture of its rubber fluid transfer and specialty sealing businesses as well as its Indian operations, comprising two manufacturing subsidiaries, including to Mutares SE & Co. KGaA.

She represented Visteon Corporation, a leading global automotive supplier and Fortune 500 company, on several matters including the 100% acquisition of a Bangalore-based information technology company, Allgo Embedded Systems Private Limited, and the acquisition of an automotive electronics business in Chennai from Hanon Systems. She also represented Schulke GmbH, Germany, then a wholly owned business of the Air Liquide group, on a global acquisition of assets constituting the healthcare antisepsis solutions business of Johnson & Johnson Inc.

Other matters include advising Dynavax Technologies Corporation on structuring and setting up its presence in India to facilitate implementation of its project with Serum Institute of India in Pune; representing TTEC (previously TeleTech Holdings) on an acquisition of an Indian call centre services company; representing Dell EMC on the transfer of business from Dell's Indian subsidiary, EMC Software and Services India Private Limited, to VMware Software India Private Limited; representing the Belectric group, part of the RWE group, on the sale of its Indian subsidiary, Jurchen Technology India Private Limited, to Lafayette Mittelstand Capital; and representing CLP India on an acquisition of solar power plants from Suzlon.

She has also assisted a US multinational corporation in carrying out a comprehensive internal and limited external investigation on vendor dealings and vendor selection processes, and advised on control systems for vendor selection; assisted a German automotive components company in carrying out a detailed internal investigation against the management of its Indian subsidiary; and advised several multinational corporations on restructuring their operations in India, including transfer and retrenchment of employees, structuring and harmonisation of compensation packages post-acquisitions, and drafting services rules and employees' codes of conduct. She has also been involved in rendering pro bono legal advice to international non-profit organisations in relation to their activities furthering social causes in India.