About

Before joining the global diversified metals and mining group, Vedanta, in 2015, Jasmeet Singh Wadehra gained legal experience in private practice, and with law firm Dua Associates. He went on to hold a series of increasingly senior in-house legal roles across a number of companies and sectors, spending spells at: GE Capital Services International; Deutsche Bank; FedEx; and International Paper. During this period of his career, Wadehra set up various businesses, worked on significant M&A transactions and post-acquisition activities, gained valuable experience of establishing strong sustainable processes in the areas of compliance, documentation and litigation management. Now leading a team of 12 within the power division of Vedanta, Wadehra has focused on three pillars of improvement: cost rationalisation by re-negotiating terms with law firms, documentation augmentation through the creation of an intranet based documentation repository, and effective litigation management strengthened with a centralised review and monitoring system. Despite the short amount of time he has been at the company, Wadehra has already made his mark by negotiating a favourable out of court settlement of a major dispute with a contractor, not only gaining the company $400m but also resulting in the resumption of works to complete a major project worth $1.5bn. A major achievement while working at International Paper was the $25m enforcement action against India’s regulator through litigation in the Supreme Court. In addition to his role at Vedanta, Wadehra has spoken at a number of international conventions on topics such as anti-corruption and litigation risk management. He has also published a number of works on topics such as tax disputes, labour law, sexual harassment and cyber laws in India. Wadehra’s excellence is recognised industry-wide, being the recipient of several industry awards. Commenting on his role as a head of legal, Wadehra says the ‘biggest challenge I have faced is a personal transformation of leadership style in my elevation to GC roles by becoming more engaging, effectively delegating and building strong teams and managing conflicts. I continue to learn these soft skills as I grow into my leadership role’.