Duff & Phelps Strengthens South Asia Presence

Opens New Office in Mumbai, Announces Kroll Leadership Transitions

Duff & Phelps, the global advisor that protects, restores and maximizes value for clients, today announced plans to expand operations with the opening of a new office in Mumbai. Spread over 20,000 square feet, the state-of-the-art facility is located in the Raheja Tower at Bandra Kurla Complex, the city’s financial hub. Furthermore, Kroll, a division of Duff & Phelps, announced that Tarun Bhatia, Managing Director for Business Intelligence and Investigations, continues to expand his leadership role in India by now becoming Head of South Asia. Concurrently Reshmi Khurana, Managing Director, has been appointed to head the operations in Southeast Asia based in Singapore. 

Commenting on the expansion, Varun Gupta, Managing Director and Asia Pacific Leader for Duff & Phelps said, “India is home to the third largest Duff & Phelps team after New York and London. The team not only serves the India market but also supports global projects involving valuation, restructuring, M&A advisory, disputes and investigations, among other services. As we grow our business in India over the coming years, Mumbai will be an important hub for our expansion strategy in the region. Together with the Kroll team, we see exciting opportunities to work on cross jurisdictional mandates for our clients.”

The expansion demonstrates 10 years of growth for Duff & Phelps and the firm’s commitment to serving clients in the Indian marketplace. In addition to industry-leading valuation services and Kroll’s expertise in business intelligence and investigations, the company’s growth is underpinned by steady demand in corporate finance and restructuring services amidst regulatory and market developments.

Tarun, a highly regarded expert in financial services and structured finance, has extensive experience evaluating, measuring and monitoring risks across corporate India. He has expertise in counselling Indian banks, non-banking financial companies and asset reconstruction companies on risk management and successful recovery from non-performing assets. Throughout his career, Bhatia has been centrally involved in pioneering deals in India and framing policy-level countrywide reforms for key sectors. This included advising one of the largest Indian government-managed retirement corpus globally (over US$50 billion) in privatization of their fund management

“Reshmi and Tarun each have deep knowledge of the regional dynamics at work throughout India and Southeast Asia,” said Tadashi Kageyama, Regional Managing Director, Business Intelligence and Investigations. “Since joining Kroll in 2015, Tarun has established an exceptional track record for advising diverse clients in India on investments, partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, litigation and dispute resolutions. Along with Tarun’s elevation to head of South Asia and Reshmi’s return to head of Southeast Asia, we welcome new colleagues from Duff & Phelps. Collectively, this all creates an extraordinary synergy that we expect to further enhance our already strong ability to provide clients in India and Southeast Asia with the information edge they need for their most important decision-making.”

Duff & Phelps entered the Indian market with the acquisition of American Appraisal in 2015 and is currently based in Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru. In May 2018, the company further expanded its India presence with the acquisition of Kroll, a leading provider of risk mitigation and corporate investigations services. Duff & Phelps is the largest independent valuation firm globally and serves some of India’s largest companies across Information technology (IT) and IT-enabled services, retail, energy, healthcare, manufacturing and financial services, among others. Duff & Phelps is also a SEBI registered Category 1 merchant bank, enabling the firm to provide fairness opinions and a wider range of valuation services to listed companies in India.