The Senior Legal Advisor is responsible for providing legal advice and support to clients on the financing activities of IFISA, 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 IFISA. Provide guidance and leadership to junior legal advisors, fostering their development and ensuring consistency in legal counsel across the organisation.
Legal Advisory Services and Contracting
- Collaborate with core project teams to support Investment Officers in structuring a diverse portfolio of investment projects, with a strong emphasis on project finance and equity transactions.
- Conduct comprehensive legal due diligence on investment opportunities to identify risks and ensure informed decision-making.
- Undertake in-depth legal research across a broad spectrum of issues relating to investment initiatives and commercial transactions.
- Provide legal input into the drafting and review of appraisal reports, ensuring accuracy, completeness, and sound legal positioning.
- Participate in DBSA/IFISA credit and/or management committees, offering expert legal guidance to support robust credit decisions.
- Prepare, review, and negotiate detailed term sheets for investment projects, particularly within project finance environments.
- Lead legal negotiations with clients, co-funders, and key stakeholders to secure favourable and commercially sound outcomes.
- Draft, review, and vet complex legal agreements and documentation, ensuring clarity, enforceability, and compliance with applicable laws.
- Identify matters requiring specialised legal expertise and manage the appointment and oversight of external legal counsel.
- Collaborate with external attorneys to prepare comprehensive legal briefs and manage transaction execution.
- Manage the legal budget related to external service providers, ensuring cost-effective utilisation of legal resources.
- Support the execution and implementation of investment transactions, particularly from a legal structuring and security perspective.
- Provide general legal advisory support across operational and corporate functions, ensuring alignment with legal and regulatory requirements.
- Risk identification and mitigation across legal, regulatory and commercial dimensions.
- Collaborate and develop infrastructure procurement documents to ensure that they adhere and align to compliance principles laid out in the following: The Constitution; National Treasury Supply Management Circulars, Directives and Guidelines; Supply Management policies; Public Finance Management Act (PFMA); Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA); Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act (PPPFA); Broadbased Black Economic Empowerment Act (BBBEE); Other applicable Procurement Laws and Public Law principles.
Compliance and Regulatory Support
- Monitor compliance with applicable legislation, internal policies, and regulatory frameworks in all legal matters.
- Work closely with Compliance to strengthen and maintain effective regulatory and governance frameworks.
- Stay abreast of legal and regulatory developments, proactively advising management and colleagues on relevant changes and implications.
- Review all documents and decisions made for compliance with various legislation, policies and regulations.
- Monitor and advise on relevant legislative and regulatory developments impacting the organisation.
- Support the implementation of governance and compliance frameworks.
Dispute Resolution and Litigation
- Provide legal guidance on complex disputes, litigation, and potential contentious matters, ensuring alignment with the organisation’s risk appetite and strategic objectives.
- Lead the assessment and resolution of disputes, formulating and driving litigation and settlement strategies that optimise legal, financial, and reputational outcomes.
- Lead the briefing and performance management of external legal counsel, ensuring high-quality legal representation and value for money.
- Manage litigation risk by advising management on exposure, safeguarding the organisation’s legal and reputational interests and recommending alternative dispute resolution mechanisms.
- Monitor that disputes are resolved in a timely, cost-effective, and commercially sound manner while safeguarding the organisation’s interests and reputation.
Stakeholder Management
- Collaborate with internal stakeholders to provide practical and commercially sound legal solutions.
- Build effective working relationships with business units to support informed decision-making.
- Provide legal training and awareness on legal and regulatory developments to internal stakeholders.
Key Measurements of Outputs
- Achievement of favourable or commercially acceptable outcomes in investment transactions, aligned with the organisation’s legal strategy and risk appetite.
- Quality, timeliness, and impact of legal advice provided
- Effective handling of disputes to minimise adverse reputational impact on the organisation.
- Minimisation of financial losses, penalties, and contingent liabilities arising from disputes and litigation.
- Time taken to prepare and or review contracts, agreements and legal opinions.
- Quality and accuracy of agreements, opinions and solutions provided.
- Effective management of legal claims and litigation risks.
- Management of total case/agreement/opinion / other legal costs.
- No litigation due to contractual errors and or omissions.
- Effective monitoring of the contracts and agreements.
INTERNAL LIAISON RELATIONSHIP (*The list is not exhaustive)
- DBSA/IFISA management committees
- Other Professionals in the DBSA Legal Unit
EXTERNAL LIAISON RELATIONSHIP (*The list is not exhaustive)
- Third-party/Service providers
- External Counsel / Attorneys
- Infrastructure South Africa
- Government Departments and SOCs
- Public & Private Sector Stakeholders
Minimum Qualification
- A Bachelor of Laws degree (LLB) or Legal postgraduate qualification.
- Admitted Attorney/Advocate of the High Court of South Africa.
Minimum Experience
- A minimum of 8 years of experience in a commercial/finance/banking or corporate law environment providing legal support on investment transactions such as project finance, structured and corporate finance.
- Proven experience in contract drafting, legal risk management, and regulatory compliance.
- Strong track record in drafting, reviewing and negotiating transaction or projects documentation, including term sheets, facility agreements, shareholder agreements, security documents, and intercreditor agreements.
- Demonstrated experience in conducting legal due diligence and advising on transaction risks, mitigants, and structuring solutions.
- Solid understanding of banking and finance law, corporate law, security structures, and regulatory frameworks, particularly within a development finance or infrastructure investment environment.
- Experience working on multi-stakeholder transactions, including engagements with sponsors, lenders, DFIs, regulators, and external counsel.
- Ability to manage execution from term sheet to financial close, including conditions precedent and condition precedent waivers.
- Experience in supporting workout, restructuring, and enforcement of distressed project finance exposures.
- Demonstrate knowledge of legislation, regulations, policies, processes and procedures governing infrastructure planning and
- development in South Africa such as PFMA, MFMA, PPP Regulations.
Desirable Requirements
- A postgraduate qualification in development finance or investment banking.
- Experience in the financial services or banking industry.
- Experience in credit committee processes, including providing legal input into investment memoranda and approvals.
- Exposure to cross-border transactions and multi-jurisdictional legal considerations.
TECHNICAL COMPETENCIES
a) Written communication
- Understands that different writing styles are required for different documents or audiences.
- Write effective correspondence, prepare 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.
b) Presentation skills
- Can reinforce key presentation points with examples.
- Can translate technical terminology into language understandable to the audience.
- Has insight into the audience’s behaviour and motivation and responds appropriately and professionally, adapting communication style as appropriate.
c) Reporting
- Designs / customises 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 under review and proposes improvements to meet user needs.
d) Legal Knowledge
- Extensive knowledge and understanding of the principles of DBSA/IFISA.
- Wide-ranging knowledge of industry best practice, and keeps abreast of, interprets and informs on developments in the area of new laws and regulations relevant to DBSA/IFISA.
e) Legal Policy Knowledge
- Ability to represent DBSA in the court of law when required.
- Ability to draft non-standard legal documents per procedures.
- Ability to draft more sensitive policy and legal procedures to be followed by stakeholders of DBSA, and review and refine in response to inputs from relevant stakeholders, for approval.
- Ability to understand legal rights and responsibilities and the possession of authority to make legal decisions.
- Protects the organisation’s legal rights, utilising a broad knowledge base of all major legal disciplines.
f) Presentation Skills
- Knows how to deliver arguments persuasively by employing a range of advanced presentation techniques (e.g., the appropriate use of body language, how to close a presentation so that the audience continues to think about the subject matter, etc.).
- Has knowledge of various feedback mechanisms to check levels of audience understanding.
g) Business Acumen
- Takes actions to fit business strategy.
- Assesses and links short-term tasks in the context of long-term business strategies or perspectives.
- Reviews own actions against the organisation's strategic plan; includes the big picture when considering possible opportunities or projects, or thinks about long-term applications of current activities.
- Anticipates possible responses to different initiatives.
- Understands the projected direction of the industry and how changes might impact the organisation.
h) Negotiations
- Has an appreciation of cultural sensitivities and differences.
- Effectively employs a variety of advanced behavioural/interpersonal competencies to control the negotiation situation.
- Is able to take the lead in a variety of sensitive negotiation situations requiring high levels of tact and diplomacy.
- Is able to place a discrete negotiation situation within the context of a broader long-term relationship and is not threatened by conceding
ground to protect the longer-term interests of DBSA.
BEHAVIOURAL COMPETENCIES
a) Customer Service Orientation
- Tries to understand the underlying needs of customers and matches these needs to available or customised products and services.
- Adapts processes and procedures to meet ongoing customer needs.
- Utilises the feedback received by customers to develop new and/or improve existing services/products that relate to their ongoing needs.
- Thinks of new ways to align DBSA/IFISA’s offerings with future customer needs.
b) Self-awareness and Self Control
- Withholds effects of strong emotions in difficult situations.
- Keeps functioning or responds constructively despite stress.
- May apply special techniques or plan ahead of time to manage emotions or stress.
c) Strategic and Innovative Thinking
- Experiments with new approaches, tests scenarios, questions assumptions and challenges conventional thinking.
- Creates new concepts that are not obvious to others, leveraging internal and external sources of information, to build incremental revenue and growth opportunities.
d) Driving delivery of results
- Sets challenging goals that will have a significant impact on the business or support the organisational strategy.
- Commits significant resources and/or time to ensure that challenging goals are achieved, while also taking action to mitigate risk.
e) Teamwork & Cooperation
- Acts to promote a friendly climate and good morale and resolves conflicts.
- Creates opportunities for cross-functional working.
- Encourages others to network outside of their own team/department and learn from their experience.
- The KPA’s, competencies and relationships listed in this document are not exhaustive, and the incumbent will be expected to undertake additional duties within their capacity to meet the needs of business and/or the business unit.
