Senior Legal Advisor: Investments

To proactively provide legal advice and support to clients on the financing activities of DBSA, ensuring that all actions, initiatives, and investments are legally sound and protect the investment portfolio. Mitigate legal risks and prevent adverse reputational or other negative consequences for DBSA. Provide guidance and leadership to junior legal advisors, fostering their development and ensuring consistency in legal counsel across the organisation.

**Key Responsibilities**:
**Key Performance Areas**:
Legal Advisory Functions:

- Collaborate with core project teams to support Investment Officers in structuring diverse investment projects, with a strong focus on project finance and equity transactions.
- Conduct thorough legal due diligence investigations on investment projects.
- Perform advanced research on a broad range of legal issues related to various investment initiatives and commercial transactions.
- Advise and contribute to the drafting and review of appraisal reports, ensuring sound legal inputs.
- Serve and participate in various credit committees of the DBSA, offering legal guidance.
- Prepare, review, and negotiate comprehensive term sheets for investment projects, with a focus on project finance transactions.
- Lead negotiations with clients, co-funders, and stakeholders to ensure favourable legal outcomes.
- Draft, vet, and review complex legal documents and agreements, ensuring clarity and compliance.
- Provide substantial legal advice, support, and opinions to various corporate support units within the DBSA.
- Monitor and maintain compliance with relevant legislation, policies, and regulations in all legal matters.
- Work closely with the compliance team to ensure robust regulatory frameworks are in place.
- Keep abreast with legal developments and update colleagues and management on relevant changes.
- Identify matters requiring specialist legal input and instruct and liaise with appropriate external counsel.
- Collaborate with external attorneys prepare comprehensive briefs and manage transactions with external counterparts.
- Manage all aspects of corporate litigation, ensuring the organisation's legal interests are protected throughout the process.
- Manage the legal budget for the appointment of an external legal service provider and ensure work is done costeffectively.
- Support the execution and implementation of investment projects from a legal and security perspective.
- Provide general legal support to the operational and corporate units of the DBSA, ensuring alignment with legal requirements.

**Key Measurements of Outputs**:
1. Time taken to prepare and or review contracts, agreements and legal opinions.
2. Quality and accuracy of agreements, opinions and solutions provided.
3. Effective management of legal claims and litigation risks.
4. Management of total case / agreement / opinion / other legal costs.
5. No litigation due to contractual errors and or omissions.
6. Effective monitoring of the contracts and agreements.

7. Clean audit.

**Key Internal Liaison Relationships**:
1. DBSA committees and unit managers
2. Other Professionals in the Legal Unit
3. DBSA Credit Committees
4. Investment Officers
5. Technical Specialist

**Key External Liaison Relationships**:
1. External Customers and DBSA Suppliers

2. External Counsel

**Expertise & Technical Competencies**:
**Qualifications and Experience**:
**Minimum Requirements**:
1. A Bachelor of Laws degree (LLB) or Legal postgraduate qualification.
2. Admitted Attorney/Advocate of the High Court of South Africa.
3. A minimum of 5 years’ experience in Project/Corporate/Structured Finance transactions.
4. A minimum of 5 years post admission experience in a commercial/finance/banking or corporate law environment gained at a commercial banking, specialist law firm/ corporate or similar institution.

**Desirable Requirements**:
1. Private-public partnership experience.
2. Municipal finance experience
3. Public Enterprises Regulatory Framework
4. Postgraduate qualification in Business, Development Finance or Banking

**Technical Competencies**:
Written communication:

- Understands that different writing styles are required for different documents or audiences.
- Write effective correspondence, prepares questions and reports, statements of circumstance and briefing notes.
- Reviews others’ documents for clarity and impact.
- Has a solid mastery of writing principles such as grammar, sentence construction etc.

Presentation skills
- Can reinforce key presentation points with examples.
- Is able to translate technical terminology into language understandable to the audience.
- Has insight into the audience’s behavior and motivation and responds appropriately and professionally, adapting communication style as appropriate.

Reporting
- Designs / customizes reports to meet user needs.
- Prepares complex or tailored reports, gathers information from a variety of sources, analyses and includes in a report.
- Keeps standard reports