Ishaan Nangia

Ishaan studied Law at The University of Melbourne and joined Linklaters as a Trainee in September 2006. In his fourth seat, he enjoyed six months in our Tokyo office before returning to London to qualify into our Corporate team.

A team environment that helps you stand out.

The transition from trainee to associate presents you with a large step up in responsibility, but experiences during my training contract prepared me well. Today I play a much larger role in the transactions I work on – from start to finish – and I’m given as much responsibility as I’m willing to take on. But the partners’ doors are always open when you need support. I also enjoy a high level of client contact, which has been incredibly satisfying. You can really see how the advice we provide assists our clients.

A more than five star experience.

One of the highlights of my career at Linklaters so far has been my secondment to our office in Tokyo where I worked in the Structured Finance and Derivatives practice. I worked on a number of complex equity, credit, foreign exchange and interest rate derivatives and structured products for a number of our global investment banking clients. And if the work wasn’t interesting enough, life in Tokyo was also fantastic. It’s by far the most vibrant city I’ve visited. Life is incredibly fast-paced and there are a number of fantastic places to visit only a short bullet train ride away. For example, I found the time to climb Mount Fuji with some other Linklaters’ trainees. The food in Tokyo was amazing too: it’s not just about sushi. In fact, the city has more Michelin stars than any other.

A pleasure to do business.

Linklaters is a truly international firm and having the opportunity to experience working in an office in another region is a tremendous advantage for your career. It is also immensely valuable to observe how business is done in another part of the world. As an example, I was fortunate enough to work with Bengoshi (Japanese lawyers) on a complex refinancing which involved us producing a single coordinated piece of advice for one of our global investment banking clients.

Feeling on top of the world.

Be it in Tokyo or London, I’ve always enjoyed exceptional levels of client contact and the opportunity to work with global organisations that are world leaders in their fields. A number of the transactions I’m involved in are groundbreaking and complex. They are often very challenging. Most notably, I was recently involved in two large bank capitalisations, which against the backdrop of the global financial crisis, meant my work was very topical and very high profile.