Career Biography

Christy has headed up the legal team at Attacq Limited for over six years, before which she worked for a short stint as a legal advisor to the Attacq Group. Attacq is a South African based REIT with a property portfolio comprising of commercial, light industry, retail and limited residential valued at approximately R20 bn. Attacq’s primary focus has been the development of Waterfall City in Midrand with the Mall of Africa being its key asset, being an award-winning super-regional mall.

Christy’s primary focus is on the deal-making in the Attacq Group ranging from green fields projects which generally involve co-investment with a co-owner in new building projects at Waterfall City, where most of Attacq’s vacant bulk land is situated, which means working closely with Attacq’s development, tax, finance and banking teams, to brown fields projects such as disposals of properties or precincts, as well as shareholding in the group, which involves working closely with Attacq’s asset and property management teams, as well as tax and finance. Outside of the long-term leasehold structure at Waterfall City, Christy also works on debt and equity legal aspects in the Attacq Group, as well as compliance work.

A notable highlight for her at Attacq was the legal work she performed in respect of the GEPF transaction in 2023, which involved the PIC (on behalf of the GEPF) acquiring a 30% equity stake in the key subsidiary of Attacq, which houses all the Waterfall City assets, which transaction was valued at just under R3 bn. Other notable transactions include the development of data centres at Waterfall co-developed with Vantage, a leading global provider of hyperscale data centre campuses, which, once fully completed through its phases, will be Africa’s largest data centre, the disposal of the Deloitte head office situated at Waterfall to the PIC, on behalf of GEPF for R1,7 bn. and the disposal to Equites of 50% undivided interests in three key buildings at Waterfall.

Before joining Attacq, she fulfilled the role of legal manager and transactor at Attacq’s subsidiary, AttAfrica Limited, which held all of Attacq’s ‘rest of Africa’ retail assets. This was a Mauritian based property investment company that focused on acquiring and developing grade A shopping centres in Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding SA), as mandated by its then shareholders, Hyprop, Attacq and Atterbury. In this role, Christy worked on the acquisition side of the business, assisting in building a pipeline of potential operational retail assets and executing on approved deals, as well as building a pipeline for and executing on green field developments for the construction of new grade A malls in West Africa. She was also intricately involved in putting in place the senior debt for this property portfolio.

Before going inhouse, Christy trained as an attorney at Webber Wentzel Attorneys in Johannesburg, spending seven years primarily in the mergers and acquisition and private equity team.

Christy is married to Philip and is a mother to three beautiful children, two sons (ages 11 and 9) and a daughter (age 6) who keep her on her toes what with all their sport and extra-murals. Whilst stimulated by her workload at Attacq, Christy is kept engaged by her colleagues who she is thrilled to work alongside every day.