Zia Mody

Zia Mody is the Founder and Senior Partner of AZB & Partners and one of India’s foremost corporate attorneys. She passed her law degree from the University of Cambridge in 1978 and was enrolled as an Advocate with the Bar Council of Maharashtra & Goa in 1978. She did her LLM from Harvard Law School and was then admitted as a member of the New York State Bar by examination in 1980. Zia worked as a corporate associate at Baker & McKenzie, New York, for five years before moving to India to set up practice, establishing the Chambers of Zia Mody in 1984, which then became AZB & Partners in 2004. The Firm has offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Pune with an integrated team of approximately 400 legal professionals.

Zia is listed in top 10 by Fortune India (2011-2017) in its ‘India’s 50 most Powerful women in business’ list and in 2018, she was ranked No. 1 in the same list. It has been said that few of Zia’s peers can match her skills or take her on when it comes to acquisitions, joint ventures, company restructuring, foreign inward investment related practice and corporate law. Zia has been recognised as a Star Individual for Corporate/M&A by Chambers Global (2017), Private Funds Lawyers from 2008 to 2017 and Corporate Governance Lawyers from 2012 to 2017. She was also listed by Forbes Asia as one of ‘Asia’s 50 Power Businesswomen’ (2015).

Zia’s abilities are recognized globally, as is reflected in her appointment as the Deputy Chairman and a Non-Executive Director of the HSBC Asia Pacific Board, a member of the World Bank Administrative Tribunal, Washington D.C. (2008- 2013), and a Vice President and Member of the London Court of International Arbitration (2010-2013). Zia serves on various advisory committees of the Confederation of Indian Industry including its National Council and its committees on Corporate Governance, Financial Services, Capital Markets and Legal Services. Zia was a member of the Godrej Committee on Corporate Governance constituted by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. She was nominated to be part of the “Committee on Rationalisation of Investment Routes and Monitoring of Foreign Portfolio Investments” formed by the Securities and Exchange Board of India under the chairmanship of Shri K.M. Chandrashekar. She was appointed by the Reserve Bank of India in 2014 as a member of Committee on Comprehensive Financial Services for Small Businesses and Low-Income Households which was chaired by Dr. Nachiket Mor.