Trade and Finance
Santanu Ghosh
Santanu has over 24 years’ experience as a lawyer (Supreme Court of India, Delhi High Court Bar Association) and heads up the India Desk at the firm. He has been resident in the UAE since 2017 and advises on all aspects of trade and finance, disputes and international arbitration. He is a Part II Registered Practitioner with the DIFC Courts and experienced advocate before DIAC.
Santanu has assisted numerous clients from the construction, manufacturing, energy, airports and infrastructure sectors. He has considerable pedigree in financial matters – having served as in-house Counsel for ICICI Bank, Standard Chartered Capital Markets and Tata Capital Financial Services.
He was previously external Counsel for AMEX (MENA region) and managed all its transactional and litigation matters. Due to assembling the right team for each case, Santanu has had many successful outcomes before the local UAE courts. He has also enforced UAE judgments before the Indian courts.
Santanu started his legal journey with Mr. Soumen Sen (current Judge of High Court, Calcutta) and worked in the Chambers of the late Mr. Kirit Raval (ex-Solicitor General of India). He learned to provide critical solutions to issues facing corporates. Thereafter, he had the honour of working with renowned advocates such as Mr. Harish Salve, Mr. Mukul Rohatgi, Mr. C.A. Sundaram, Mr. Dushyant Dave, Mr. Krishnan Venugopal, Mr. Janak Dwarkadas, Mr. Virag Tulzapurkar, Mr. Dinyar Madon and Mr. Pravin Samdani.
He was involved with complex, high value arbitration, commercial transactions, writ petitions in tenders for public bodies, airport regulatory, airport development fee, ground handling and service tax matters.
Santanu’s commercial advisory role includes all manner of commercial documents, concession agreements, loan agreements, bid documents (RFP & RFQ), shareholder agreements, agency agreements, distributor agreements, cross-border agreements, intermediary agreements, joint venture agreements, umbrella contracts, corporate grant agreements, sale and purchase agreements with government entities, leave and licence agreements, food and beverages agreements, NDA and software development agreements comprising various scope of work for business development, developer agreements for major real estate providers.
Santanu was solely responsible for all transactional documentation relating to Castrol Oil and British Petroleum whilst in practice in Mumbai. He managed litigation matters relating to Kingfisher Airlines, Hiranandani Palace Gardens, Biotor Industries, Kiri Industries, ABG Shipyard, Manipal Motors, Tata AIG amongst others.
His clients have included Jet Airways, Cox & Kings, Kotak Mahindra Bank and SBI Capital Markets.
Previous UAE Matters
Lead counsel in DIFC-LCIA before sole arbitrator Mr. Ahmed Ibrahim (related to shareholder dispute in July 2023).
Lead counsel for ex-UAE national cricket captain in a breach case before a three bench Tribunal consisting of the Honourable Michael J Beloff KC, Chairman Michael Heron KC and Imtiaz Ahmad (barrister).
Lead counsel in three DIAC matters before Dr. Talal H. Jaber, Ms. Lara Hammoud and Mr. Thani Al Falasi.
Set aside default judgements in two Part 7 DIFC court claims before H.E Justice Omar Al Muhairi
Drafted a Part 8 claim in DIFC Court for an interim injunction along with a Rejoinder and Skeleton Arguments for an ADGM registered entity which was granted by H.E. Justice Shamlan Al Sawalehi.
Drafted a Part 8 claim for permission to commence a derivative action claim before H.E. Deputy Chief Justice Ali Al Madhani.
Appeared before Justice Rene Le Miere at DIFC court in an application for strike out.
Drafted a defence for an individual suing his bank at the ADGM court.
Supervised an Arabic speaking legal team on Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah court cases.