Investment Officer: Municipalities

Job Description

The purpose of the Investment Officer role is to support the generation of deal flow and build a strong pipeline of prospective projects for development financing. This role is also responsible for structuring deals, as well as appraising, negotiating, and closing transactions in a Municipal environment.

Key Responsibilities

Investment and Loan Transactions

• Originate, identify, structure and execute infrastructure investment opportunities in key strategic sectors/investment themes.
• Perform detailed analysis of investment opportunities, including commercial analysis, financial modelling and risk and institutional analysis.
• Negotiate and review transaction agreements (including finance agreements) and project documents.
• Facilitate deal closure by taking responsibility for optimal financial, institutional and legal structuring.
• Provide innovative and flexible financial structures for complex transactions.
• Prepare Investment Committee and Board papers on investment opportunities for consideration by management and committees (including the Board).
• Manage relationships at various levels with the relevant project stakeholders, partners, and lead promoters, in accordance with the project’s development objectives.
• Identify and report growth opportunities to enhance market presence and implement structured and targeted marketing strategies to promote services.

Product Development

• Conduct market research on financial products, industry benchmarks, and emerging macro- and micro-economic trends to strengthen market competitiveness and inform strategic decision-making.
• Solicit inputs from legal and technical teams to ensure feasibility and compliance, and ensure alignment of products with regulatory and institutional frameworks.
• Provide support in drafting presentations for structured solutions to internal committees and external partners.

Transaction Execution and Credit Approval

• Collaborate with the Treasury, Legal, Credit and Loan Administration teams to structure and negotiate detailed term sheets, ensuring transaction approval.
• Secure internal approvals and lead or participate actively in closing transactions through successful negotiations.
• Manage the credit approval process from early review to final decision by the relevant committees.
• Review proposals submitted to approval committees to ensure they are well-structured and documented for informed decision-making.
• Resolve potential constraints in the lending value chain in collaboration with the Head of Transacting.
• Implement risk management procedures across continent-wide financing functions, ensuring investment risks are appropriately structured and mitigated during operations.
• Capture and apply learning opportunities post-transaction to drive continuous improvement and successful deal delivery.

Relationship Management and Business Development

• Build and maintain strong relationships with clients, global and regional private businesses, banking and multilateral partners and government officials to further develop specific investment opportunities.
• Undertake business development in South Africa and the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa and position DBSA as the preferred lender/investor/partner.
• Ensure continuous communication with DBSA-funded project clients to support the division’s monitoring function.
• Undertake other tasks as assigned by the line manager, from time to time.

Key Measurements of Outputs (The list is not exhaustive)

• Number of transactions that are approved and committed for DBSA funding to municipalities, municipal entities, and water services authorities.
• Quality of signed agreements/mandates.
• Clients and Stakeholders' service rating.
• Number and quality of early review reports (ERR’s) submitted.
• Revenue performance in terms of interest income and fees generated.
• Percentage of the loan book in priority geographies and sectors.
• Annual disbursements, commitments and approvals.
• Management of relationships with new/ existing clients.

Expertise & Technical Competencies

Minimum Requirements

• A Bachelor's Degree in Business, Finance or Engineering, Economics, Actuarial Science or related.

Minimum Qualification

• A minimum of 3-5 years’ experience in appraising, negotiating, undertaking due diligence and closing municipal finance, State Owned Enterprises finance, project finance, corporate finance, or structured finance transactions in a financial institution.
• Knowledge of the public sector financial and regulatory environments, including PFMA and MFMA.
• Proven experience in working with Government institutions in South Africa.
• Experience in working on investment projects through an established approval process.
• Demonstrable track record of originating, structuring and closing infrastructure transactions.
• Understanding of the types of agreements/contracts typically used in corporate finance and/or limited recourse project finance.
• Capacity to deal with conflicting priorities and deliver high-quality work on schedule; ability to work successfully in multicultural teams and across boundaries.
• Commitment to ethical standards and to sustainable development with sensitivity to social and environmental challenges.
• Good interpersonal, diplomatic and partnership skills required for building and maintaining collaborative relationships with key stakeholders.

Desirable Requirements

• Experience in securing infrastructure investment deals in the public sector/municipalities.
• Experience in developing new business strategies and opportunities to create a pipeline of development impact projects, ensuring deal flow and bankability.

TECHNICAL COMPETENCIES

Project Management

• Defines, plans, and manages large and/or strategic projects, including those with a high degree of technical complexity, with impacts across the organisation and/or with national implications.
• Assembles and leads diverse and multi-disciplinary teams, ensuring maximum effective resource utilisation.
• Successfully manages substantial project budgets and reports directly to senior managers on the progress and results of projects.
• Identifies complex issues that need escalation and proposes appropriate corrective actions.

Business Development

• Takes overall lead for proactive business development at the national and international level.
• Initiates, reviews, and interprets competitor environment reviews and takes actions accordingly.
• Formulates and modifies market approaches based on competitor analyses.
• Leads the formulation, development and implementation of the business development strategy to generate new business opportunities in public and private sector delivery of infrastructure.
• Identifies and develops new markets, products and clients.
• Leads the participation and presentation of an organisation at investment conferences and roundtable discussions.
• Coordinates business activities to ensure that investment initiatives are in support of government BEE strategies, broader national and regional economic development strategies.

Solution Focus

• Identifies broad, highly complex problems based on a multitude of factors, many of which are complex and sweeping in nature, difficult to define and often contradictory.
• Creates procedures to articulate the nature of problems and to identify and weigh alternate solutions.
• Evaluates the effectiveness of solutions using approaches tailored to the situation.

Deal Structuring

• Uses credit enhancement techniques to structure deals and optimise pricing in terms of Basel principles.
• Has an in-depth and practical understanding of how to optimise the Capital Structure, collateral package, and debt repayment profile.
• Interrogates financial models, including those with a high degree of complexity, to develop an optimal structure.
• Identifies complex structural issues that need escalation and proposes appropri