About

In addition to being a Partner of Everstone Capital Advisors, P M Devaiah is primarily responsible at a group level for legal, secretarial and compliance functions at the firm as well as its buy-out and platform investments. He has transformed the legal department into an “in-house law firm” by hiring the right talent with excellent capabilities relevant to the industry whilst providing good training and empowerment with responsibility. With this effective on-the-job training backed by empowerment, Devaiah says that, ‘members of my team have gained huge experience making the team a value enhancer to the organisation’, by achieving business goals while not compromising legal and governance standards. Additionally, he has donned the role of a mentor and a statesman to bring to the table a function that supports the business, to achieve their goals in a most transparent, legal and compliant manner. Devaiah says that, ‘this process of bridging the relationship between the business and law has provided me an edge to be an important conscience keeper and a solution provider to the organisation’. As a leading private equity investor in India, the company conducts a lot deals and M&A is its main business. At any point of time it is engaged in several of acquisitions concurrently and Devaiah’s team is constantly engaged in negotiating term sheets, negotiating shareholders agreements, diligence of various types and negating insurance contracts. Similarly, in the last two years it conducted a couple of buy-outs, minority investments, took the portfolio company public with a very successful listing, and secured a high profile joint venture with a UK based organisation where government of UK and government of India were anchor investors. The team is structured to provide the guidance in all matters that concern law and regulations to cater to effective compliance, sound legal practices and robust paper work on transactions, attention to reputational risk, investor management and internal training. All of these matters Devaiah identifies as important aspects of his work and the strategic direction of the company.