Webber Wentzel has more than 20 years' private equity advisory experience in the South African and wider African markets and is widely regarded as a market leader in fund formation and transactional work, locally and throughout the rest of Africa.

Our clients include leading South African and international private equity and venture capital houses, as well as investors, financiers and management teams.

The Private Equity Practice advises on all types of investments and exits, including start-up and early stage investments, development capital, all forms of buy-outs (including secondary buy-outs), public to privates, exits (including sale to trade or financial buyers, by means of an IPO, recapitalisations and debt restructurings).

We have the ability to put together teams from various practice areas; in particular, we work closely with the Tax and Banking & Finance Practices to ensure efficient structuring and implementation of transactions to our clients' best advantage.

We advise on, design and manage all aspects of an acquisition, disposal, investment or divestment, including:

• advising on the form of the transaction and designing and implementing an efficient transaction structure from both legal and tax perspectives;
• undertaking legal due diligence;
• drafting and negotiating consortium agreements among the private equity consortium and the arrangements between shareholders, including shareholder agreements;
• structuring, drafting and negotiating management arrangements, including ratchet schemes and other incentivisation arrangements. We have designed many of the structures that are now standard in the market and continue to innovate as legislation changes;
• advising on and structuring the Black Economic Empowerment aspects of a transaction;
• liaising with regulatory bodies and obtaining regulatory approvals, including competition approval and exchange control approval;
• drafting and negotiating all relevant documentation including sale and purchase, subscription and investment agreements; and
• drafting and commenting on prospectuses, circulars and other offering memoranda to potential investors and/or shareholders.

We have significant experience in fund formation and today we act for local and international private equity and venture capital houses looking to raise funds for deployment in South Africa, the rest of Africa generally and also for limited partners looking to invest in those funds.

Together with the Tax Practice we ensure efficient structuring from a tax and exchange control perspective for limited partners and private equity executives.

Our relationships with other international firms allow us to form Africa-focused funds domiciled locally and abroad. In addition to South Africa, we have assisted clients to establish funds in Botswana and Mauritius, as well as in a number of non-African jurisdictions.

Funds we have advised on cover the full spectrum of generalist funds and sector funds, including real estate, agriculture, technology, healthcare and infrastructure funds.