Harman Singh Sandhu
Harman Singh Sandhu is a Partner in the firm’s Competition Law Practice, involved with competition law since its inception in India.
Harman has extensive experience in advising Indian and foreign companies in relation to a whole range of competition issues (both advisory and proceedings before the CCI, the NCLAT, the High Courts, and the Supreme Court).
Harman has been involved in defending large multinational companies in high profile cartel enforcement cases and leniency matters, in the cement and tyre industries amongst others. Harman advised on the seminal CCI v. SAIL case, the first case under the Competition Act to be decided by the Supreme Court. He has successfully defended Apollo Tyres in the tyre cartelisation case, Tata Chemicals in the soda ash cartelisation matter, and Visaka Industries in relation to alleged cartelisation in the asbestos sheets sector. He has acted for ACC in the cement cartel case, and for ACC and Ambuja Cements in relation to alleged bid rigging conduct.
Harman has also represented clients in several abuse of dominance cases. He has defended Coal India (a state-owned enterprise) in relation to abuse of dominance for procurement of explosives and is currently defending Coal India before the Supreme Court and the NCLAT in relation to findings by the CCI of abuse of dominance. Harman also represents Nissan Motors and obtained a stay from the Supreme Court on the Competition Appellate Tribunal’s order against Nissan and other car manufacturers. He also acted for Vodafone India in the anti-competitive tie-in case involving the sale of Apple iPhones. Harman successfully defended the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, OYO (a leading global hotel chain), Asian Paints Limited and Coal India before the CCI against allegations of abuse of dominance.
Harman continues to represent state-owned oil marketing companies in an important litigation regarding regulatory overlaps between the CCI and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board. Harman also advises and delivers training to companies on compliance issues. He has been instrumental in designing the compliance programme for ACC and conducts regular trainings for Asian Paints, Cummins, 3M, etc.
On the merger control side, Harman has been pivotal in securing CCI approval for several major transactions, including the Publicis-Omnicom merger, Nippon Steel-Sumitomo Metal merger, Nestlé’s acquisition of Pfizer’s nutrition business, and Mitsui’s acquisition of a stake in a pharmaceuticals company (the first merger control clearance in the pharmaceuticals sector in India). He advised GSK/Novartis on their multi-step transaction involving vaccines, oncology and OTC businesses. He obtained conditional clearance for the Holcim/Lafarge transaction. Harman represented Allergan in its combination with Pfizer, Halliburton in its acquisition of Baker Hughes, United Technologies Corporation in its acquisition of Wipro’s eco-energy business, and TDK / Toshiba in the creation of a joint venture. He advised on Baker Hughes’ merger with General Electric, DuPont’s merger with Dow, Agrium’s merger with Potash Corporation, and the Praxair-Linde merger. Additionally, he advised on the transaction between Alstom and Siemens in relation to their mobility businesses, secured unconditional clearance for Saudi Aramco’s acquisition of SABIC and Alstom’s acquisition of Bombardier Transportation and Fiat’s merger with Peugeot. He obtained conditional clearance in the merger between Metso and Outotec, involving a first-of-its-kind quasi-structural remedy.
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Harman has obtained unconditional clearances for several other high-profile and complex cross-border and domestic transactions, including Siemens Healthineers’ acquisition of Varian Medical Systems, Paradeep Phosphates’ acquisition of Zuari Agro Chemicals, Baring Private Equity Asia’s separate investments in Hinduja Global Solutions and Global Content Alpha Partners, the merger of Tech Data Corporation with Synnex and FedEx’s investment in Delhivery. Harman was pivotal in OMERS Infrastructure Asia obtaining green channel approval for its investment in Azure Power Global and in CA Magnum Holdings (part of the Carlyle Group) obtaining a green channel approval in its acquisition of majority shareholding in Hexaware Technologies Limited. He also obtained clearance on behalf of nine public financial institutions led by NTPC for the acquisition of Jhabua Power. Harman was also instrumental in obtaining unconditional approvals for EQT’s acquisition of Baring Private Equity Asia and SALIC International Investment Company’s acquisition of stake in Olam Agri Holdings Pte. Ltd. Harman has secured approvals for Gateway Velocity Holding Corp., a subsidiary of Saudi Arabian Oil Company, in relation to its acquisition of the global products business of Valvoline Inc., Atlas 2022 Holdings Ltd., a subsidiary of the Emirates Telecommunications Group Company PJSC, in relation to its minority acquisition of shareholding in Vodafone Group Plc. and for Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board for its minority acquisition in BusyBees Logistics Private Limited.
In 2024, Harman secured conditional clearance for the merger of the digital and linear entertainment businesses of Viacom18 (part of Reliance Industries) with Star India (wholly owned by the Walt Disney Company), unconditional clearance for Bunge Limited’s acquisition of Viterra Limited, and unconditional clearance for Advent International’s investment in Apollo Healthco (AHL), AHL’s investment in Keimed and the resultant merger of Keimed into AHL.
In 2025, Harman secured unconditional clearance for the acquisition of Ecom Express with Delhivery resulting in the creation of the largest e-commerce logistics provider in India. He also secured unconditional approval for Bajaj group’s acquisition of Allianz’s shares in Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance Company Limited, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Company Limited and Bajaj Allianz Financial Distributors Limited – one of the largest transactions in the Indian insurance sector. He represented Sumitomo Corporation, Isuzu Motors Limited and SML Isuzu Limited, in Mahindra and Mahindra’s acquisition of stake in SML Isuzu Limited.
Harman has been ranked in various Chambers and Partners guides since 2013. He rose to Band 1 in Chambers and Partners in 2022, with sources that year appreciating that “he owns the brief and handholds the client through the entire process”, and that “his legal advice to be an excellent bridge between stakeholder demands and the regulators“. Ranked as Band 1 in Chambers and Partners for 2024-25 he is described as “someone to go to if you need wise counsel” and noted that “he has a lot of experience and is very calm with competition law, especially on strategy; he comes up with practical solutions”. Chambers and Partners in 2024 noted that “Harman is an excellent lawyer with good commercial sense and the ability to remain calm even in challenging situations, while remained focused on the solution”.
Harman has been acknowledged as a ‘Leading Lawyer’ in Global Competition Review’s Who’s Who Legal for competition lawyers since 2011. He has been recognised as ‘Global Elite Thought Leader’ for Competition Law by Global Competition Review’s Who’s Who Legal, successively from 2021 to 2025. He was also recognised as ‘Litigation star for Competition/antitrust’ by Benchmark Litigation 2023. He was also ranked among IBLJ’s A-List of India’s Top 100 Lawyers, 2023.
Harman has co-authored leading guides on the law of Dominance, Merger Control in India and Cartels in India, in the Getting the Deal Through series, which are key global reference materials for these areas of law.
Before joining the firm, Harman worked with the Office of Communications (UK) and the Directorate General of Competition in the European Commission – Cartels Division (Belgium), focusing on competition law issues. Harman holds an LL.B. from M. D. University and completed his LL.M. in Competition Law from King’s College London under the supervision of Professor Richard Whish, a world-renowned competition law expert.
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Professional Memberships
- Bar Council of India
Education
- LLB, M.D. University, 2003
- LLM, (Corporate and Commercial Law) King’s College London 2005
- Post Graduate Diploma (International Commercial and Construction Arbitration), Queen Mary College, 2006