Senior Legal Advisor: Transacting (SA)

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Job Grade 00 Job Type Classification Permanent Location - Town / City Midrand Job Profile (Downloadable) Senior Legal Advisor Transacting_Job Profile May 2026 Final - SA.docx.pdf (317.18 kb) - 9/22/2026 4:00:58 PM 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 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. 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. 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. 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. *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. Required Personal Attributes BEHAVIOURAL COMPETENCIES 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’s offerings with future customer needs. 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. 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. 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. 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.