About

Amit Deshpande is the company secretary and the corporate general counsel of Sterlite Technologies, a Vedanta Group company. Sterlite is India’s only integrated optical fibre producer and one of the largest suppliers of optical fibres to overseas markets in China, Europe and Southeast Asia. Deshpande is a senior legal professional having extensive experience of over 15 years in various areas including corporate laws, M&As, corporate restructuring, financial closures, legal due diligences, statutory compliances, international commercial contracts, arbitrations, land acquisitions and more. At Sterlite, he plays active role in secretarial, corporate legal, ethics and compliances and inorganic initiatives among others. Prior to Sterlite, he worked with companies like Vishay Components (India), Kirloskar Oil Engines and Tata Auto Comp. In July 2014, Deshpande was involved in boarding a new investor in the company’s power business who invested around US$41m. He handled the 2015 acquisition of Elitecore Technologies subsequently merging the same with Sterlite Technologies, and spearheaded a complex demerger of the power business of the company into a separate unlisted company requiring multiple regulatory approvals. A nominator has identified that, Deshpande ‘had led one of the most complex schemes undertaken in the history of corporate India’. In 2014 to 2015 he and his team arrived at an amicable settlement in a dispute with a Spanish customer under a complex ICC London Arbitration with a claim amount of over US$8.1m. Internally, Deshpande has also made innovations including the setting up of a comprehensive online statutory compliance framework system in the organisation covering over 10 manufacturing and office locations in India and abroad and having a responsibility matrix of over 100 employees. On his leadership, another nominator said, ‘Deshpande is a fine lawyer with a sound secretarial background, [and] a good understanding of the business aspects of the company’.