Bharti Airtel has appointed R Sundar Rajan as the Group General Counsel of its holding company, Bharti Enterprises. He succeeds Mukesh Bhavnani who had resigned from the position in April 2015.

Rajan has 27 years of legal experience and has worked with companies including Suzlon, Ashok Leyland, Unilever, and Wipro.

At Bharti Airtel, Rajan will be responsible for the company’s secretarial, compliance and legal matters, including mergers and acquisitions. His appointment comes at a time when Bharti Airtel is in talks with Malaysia-based telecom operator XL Axiata to merge its Bangladesh operations into the latter. The company is also in talks to sell certain assets in Africa that it now considers non-core to its business.