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Africa Teams 2016

Financials

FirstRand

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Africa Teams 2016

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FirstRand

The FirstRand group is a leading financial services provider from South Africa offering a full range of banking products and services to clients in various jurisdictions across the continent. The...

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FirstRand occupies a position at the top of the South African financial market, employing over 40,000 individual and operating with licensed status from the Reserve Bank of South Africa. In October 2016, FirstRand overtook financial giant Deutsche Bank in terms of market capitalization in South Africa. As with any financial institution of its size, FirstRand has relied on its legal team top navigate international regulatory complexity, but the team has also contributed to the bank’s expansion with its work on a number of standout deals.

In September 2016, it engaged in a debt-for-equity swap deal in conjunction with other companies for clothing, footwear and textiles retailer Edcon worth $1.5bn. The company’s legal team has developed significant expertise in complex transactions, with a source describing them as being composed of ‘high quality in-house counsel’ capable of rivalling a law firm. The team tends to provide ‘the best possible advice’, even when their work involves ‘a very complicated transaction’.

The consolidation of the bank’s procurement legal team and the centralisation of this function across all group companies has also had significant benefits. This has ‘allowed the bank to leverage its scale through its buying power in order to achieve higher cost savings through consolidated purchasing practices’, which has allowed them to have a major effect on the bank’s procurement efficiency. In terms of their strategic impact, through ‘employing expert skill… as well as building solid relationships…the [procurement] team has been able to participate and direct major transactions in the bank’.

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