banking and finance practice group

Bowman Gilfillan’s highly rated, resourceful and pioneering banking and finance practice provides sound advice in relation to the full range of banking and finance transactions.

Our multi-talented lawyers are highly regarded for their excellence, broad experience and versatility. We work on the most difficult, demanding and innovative local and international deals and provide the highest quality of service to all types of clients including leading local and international financial institutions, corporate and investment banks, corporates, state-owned entities, regulatory bodies and governments.

We specialise in complex finance transactions and have extensive knowledge of leveraged and acquisition finance, structured finance, capital markets, project finance, property (real estate) finance, minerals and resource finance, insolvency and restructuring, derivatives, securitisation and preference share finance. We execute challenging and novel transactions with innovation, enthusiasm and commercial pragmatism and advise clients who are at the forefront of their markets. Our work is high profile and intellectually demanding. In addition, the practice area extends to bilateral and syndicated loans, guarantee and security issues and regulatory matters, including the establishment of banks in South Africa and the carrying on of lending and investment banking activities within South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. Our team is constantly at the forefront of developments in the banking and finance field and is a market-leader for innovation, documentation standards and best practice (including advising on ground-breaking black economic empowerment financing structures).

Our banking and finance practice is one of the largest and broadest based practices among the major South African law firms. Fully integrated with our Insolvency, Tax and Capital Markets practices, the members of this practice group routinely work with other lawyers in the firm to handle many of the largest and most complex financings, debt restructurings and work-outs and development of sophisticated financial products. With around 50 lawyers dedicated to the practice area we are able to field dedicated and appropriately staffed teams for the largest and most demanding transactions. We are well-known for our ability to close complex transactions in record-time. Our depth of expertise also enables us to provide advice across the entire capital structure of a transaction (from working capital facilities to hedging; equity financing to mezzanine debt).

In addition, our team includes a number of lawyers who are admitted as Solicitors in the Senior Courts of England and Wales allowing us to provide seamless advice on English law governed financings across Sub-Saharan Africa supported by our affiliate office in Nairobi, Kenya and our network of correspondent lawyers with significant banking and finance experience in the major Sub-Saharan African jurisdictions.

Partners in our banking and finance practice (including Lionel Shawe ranked in Band 1 by Chambers and Partners and as a Leading Lawyer by IFLR1000 and described by Chambers and Partners as the “best banking, loans and acquisitions lawyer in the country”) are consistently rated among the highest-qualified lawyers in their fields in South Africa by Chambers & Partners, Who's Who Legal, BestLawyers, IFLR1000 and Legal500. While many of our lawyers have highly specialised skills in diverse banking and finance practice areas (some specialisation is inevitable in response to the demands of clients), we encourage in our banking and finance lawyers as broad an experience as possible. We believe this approach makes for better lawyers and who advise clients imaginatively and in a solutions-driven manner. Our clients also appreciate our up to date knowledge of the market.