A&O duo succeed Pease as India chiefs

Allen & Overy (A&O) has appointed a duo of partners to head its India group following the retirement of India group chairman Alex Pease at the end of last year.

London projects and structured finance partner Jonathan Brayne has taken over from Pease as chairman of the India group. Hong Kong head of Asian capital markets Andrew Harrow has become managing partner of the India group.

Brayne said he hoped to see the liberalisation of the Indian legal market before the end of his two year term in the role. He added: "A great thing, that is outside of our control, would be if the law firm market were to liberalise in India to the extent that we could approach that market in the same way as others."

Pease had been instrumental in forging A&O's non-exclusive referral relationship with Indian firm Trilegal. Pease will accompany Brayne to India at the end of this month to deal with the handover of the relationship with the firm.

Pease said: "I've thoroughly enjoyed developing and driving forward the firm's strategy for India. Working with Trilegal and overseeing the development of our referral relationship has been a real pleasure."

Pease has now left the A&O partnership but will remain as chairman of the firm's alumni programme in a consultancy role.

To subscribe to our free Lawyer News Daily news and comment email, click here. Or get the latest news, features and comment as it's published with our free RSS feed.