Nishith Desai, managing partner of Nishith Desai Associates, is an international tax and corporate lawyer, business strategist, researcher, author, and lecturer. Mr. Desai has been ranked among the eight best Indian tax advisers by Legal 500 and Tax Directors Handbook 2009. In November 2004, Mr. Desai was ranked as number 28 in a global Top 50 “Gold List” by Tax Business, a UK-based journal for the international tax community, after a worldwide survey of tax professionals who had influenced tax policies. He is also the only lawyer to hold a special license from the State Bar of California to practice Indian law. Mr. Desai’s practice encompasses an extensive range of tax, corporate, and technology matters, with a strong emphasis on private equity and venture capital funds. His other areas of practice include corporate globalization, international listings, M&A transactions, international IPOs, international successions management, corporate governance, e-commerce taxation, joint ventures and strategic alliances, employment and human resource laws, intellectual property rights, media and entertainment laws, complex information technology and business process outsourcing (BPO) transactions, and social sector laws.