About

Prior to joining Morgan Stanley in November 2016, Ipsita Dutta spent over eleven years in private practice having worked at Amarchand & Mangaldas Suresh A. Shroff & Co and thereafter at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, as partner and head of the financial regulatory practice group. Morgan Stanley’s legal and compliance department is a diverse and accomplished team with colleagues who have worked in reputed law firms globally before moving in-house with Morgan Stanley. As such, the level of sophistication that goes into each decision making process is very high and it’s a well-oiled machine in terms of processes and controls. Dutta enjoys collaborating meaningfully with regional and global teams to apply the same standard of global best practices in a seamless manner across all India businesses and also leverage the best know-how within the Firm. Dealing closely with the legal and regulatory framework of different jurisdictions and getting a deeper and real time understanding of financial products and underlying commercial rationale for business decisions enhances her ability to refine the legal input in a way that syncs with the firm’s values and culture of doing business globally. She identifies that, ‘it has also sharpened my ability to look at the bigger picture in any discussion and not miss the forest for the trees’. Dutta has rebuilt the legal coverage team for India since she assumed this position. Significantly, the team now has two private practitioners with number of years of experience in one of India’s leading law firm. This has strengthened the team with more local expertise and knowledge of the Indian market. She says that she ‘would like to believe that this is a key differentiator for any in-house function as it enable is to leverage on localised know-how and connections in a way that improves legal support and risk assessment that we are able to provide to the firm and the different businesses’. As general counsel for India, Dutta’s coverage ranges from investment banking, global capital markets, institutional equities broking, and investment management as well our global in-house centres. Given the breadth of my coverage, there are a wide range of issues that come her way on a daily basis. Some key assignments include capital markets transactions such as: the secondary block sale of TCS shares by Tata Sons; IPO of HDFC Standard Life Insurance; HDFC Asset Management Company Limited IPO; IPO of IndoStar Capital Finance Limited; QIP+ADS by HDFC Bank. Additionally, assisting with intra group transactions such as schemes of amalgamations and capital raising through NCD issuances and assisting with the setting up and first close of MS’ first Cat II AIF Fund focused on infrastructure and advising on on-going regulatory changes to the FPI/ODI and swap regime. Dutta is also part of Morgan Stanley India’s corporate social responsibility implementation committee which works towards identifying the partners and projects to implement our CSR initiatives and give back to communities around us and also chair the sexual harassment committee for one of our offices in Mumbai.