Senior Legal Advisor: Transacting (SA)

Job Description

The Senior Legal Advisor is responsible for providing 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 professionals in the legal team, fostering their development and ensuring consistency in legal counsel across the organisation.

Key Responsibilities

Legal Transaction Structuring, Execution & Advisory

• Provide strategic legal leadership across the full transaction lifecycle, including high-value and complex transactions.
• Lead, from a legal perspective, the structuring and execution of transactions across project finance, blended and structured finance, equity investments, and public-private partnerships (PPPs), ensuring alignment with institutional mandates, legal frameworks, and risk appetite.
• Act as a strategic legal partner to Investment Division and multidisciplinary teams, driving the development of innovative, commercially sound financing structures and solutions, while providing expert legal oversight throughout the transaction lifecycle.
• Conduct comprehensive legal due diligence and risk assessments, identifying legal, regulatory, and structuring risks and implementing appropriate mitigation strategies.
• Draft, review, and negotiate complex legal documentation, including term sheets, mandates, facility agreements, shareholder agreements, security packages, and intercreditor/co-funding arrangements.
• Lead, in support of the Investment Division, Business Support and Recovery and/or Credit Risk and Portfolio management, as the case may be, negotiations with sponsors, borrowers, lenders, co-funders, and counterparties to achieve optimal commercial and legal outcomes.
• Provide expert legal input into appraisal reports, credit papers, and committee submissions, and actively contribute to credit committee deliberations.
• Provide expert legal support and input in transaction execution through approval to financial close, ensuring legal integrity, enforceability, and compliance.
• Manage external legal counsel, including appointment, briefing, performance oversight, and cost control, to ensure efficient delivery of specialised legal services.
• Provide ongoing legal advisory support across corporate, operational, and investment functions.

Compliance and Regulatory Support

• Promote adherence to applicable legislation, regulatory requirements, and internal governance frameworks across all legal and transactional activities.
• Monitor and interpret legal and regulatory developments, providing proactive, strategic guidance to the organisation.
• Support and strengthen institutional compliance and governance frameworks in collaboration with Compliance and Risk functions.
• Review legal documentation, decisions, and processes to ensure alignment with regulatory and policy requirements.

Dispute Resolution and Litigation

• Manage litigation and dispute resolution processes, safeguarding the organisation’s legal, financial, and reputational interests.
• Lead the appointment and oversight of external counsel in disputes, ensuring high-quality representation and cost-effectiveness.
• Advise management on litigation risk exposure and recommend appropriate dispute resolution strategies, including alternative dispute mechanisms.
• Facilitate timely and commercially sound resolution of disputes.

Stakeholder Management & Capacity Building

• 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.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with internal stakeholders, providing practical, solution-oriented legal advice.
• Engage effectively with external stakeholders, including clients, co-funders, regulators, and legal advisors.
• Provide legal training and guidance to enhance organisational awareness of legal, regulatory, and transactional risks.

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, accuracy and timeliness of legal advice, documentation and transaction support.
• 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.
• Strong compliance outcomes, including clean audit results

Expertise & Technical Competencies

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 8-10 years’ post-qualification 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 complex contract drafting, legal risk management, and regulatory compliance.
• Strong track record in drafting and negotiating transaction documentation, including term sheets, facility agreements, shareholder agreements, security documents, and intercreditor agreements.
• Demonstrated experience in leading legal due diligence processes and advising on transaction risks, mitigants, and structuring solutions.
• In-depth 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.

Desirable Requirements:

• A postgraduate qualification in development finance or investment banking.
• Experience in the financial services or banking industry.
• Demonstrated experience dealing with cross-border transactions and multi-jurisdictional legal considerations.

TECHNICAL COMPETENCIES

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.

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.

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.

Legal Knowledge

• Extensive knowledge and understanding of the principles of DBSA.
• 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.

Legal Po