Latham & Watkins advises on India's largest-ever IPO

Latham & Watkins advises on India's largest-ever IPO

One97 Communications, operating under Paytm, lists on the Indian Stock Exchange

An American multinational law firm Latham & Watkins has advised on the debut listing of India's largest payments platform One97 Communications Limited, which operates under the brand 'Paytm', on the National Stock Exchange of India Limited (NSE) and BSE (formerly the Bombay Stock Exchange) Limited.

The offering was over-subscribed 1.89 times and raised a total of Rs.18,300 million (approx. US$2.4 billion), making the transaction the largest-ever initial public offering (IPO) in Indian capital market history.

The underwriters were Morgan Stanley India Company Private Limited, Goldman Sachs (India) Securities Private Limited, Axis Capital Limited, ICICI Securities Limited, J.P. Morgan India Private Limited, Citigroup Global Markets India Private Limited and HDFC Bank Limited.

Singapore partner Rajiv Gupta with associate Esha Goel led the deal team. Advice on tax matters was provided by Los Angeles partner Eric Cho and Century City partner Sam Weiner, with associate Ryan Brenner. Singapore partner Min Yee Ng and Chicago partner Nabil Sabki, with associate John Reinert, also advised on the transaction.

Latham has one of the largest and most active Indian practices among international law firms, with over 20 years of experience advising on Indian debt and equity capital markets transactions. The multi-award-winning practice comprises more than 50 lawyers globally and the team has advised on India-related matters with a combined value in excess of US$90 billion since 2018.

Paytm is India's largest payments platform based on the number of consumers, number of merchants and number of transactions. As of June 2021, it offered payment services, commerce and cloud services and financial services to 337 million registered consumers and over 21.8 million registered merchants.