South Africa and restructuring
Join this virtual briefing for an outlook on restructurings in the South African market.
Loading feed
Speakers
Confirm cancellation
Something went wrong.
An error occurred trying to play the stream. Please reload the page and try again.
Close
Arno is a Chartered Accountant by training with 15 years experience in Leveraged Finance and Private Equity. He is currently a Director at Apex Partners which is a specialist investor in complex situations including distressed buyouts and recapitalisations which will typically include both balance sheet and operational restructuring.
Yoza joined Mergence in November 2019 as Joint Managing Director of Mergence Investment Managers. She has 15 years’ investment banking experience as originator and structurer of acquisition financing/investments for mid to large cap corporates in South Africa, Sub Saharan Africa and Europe, as a dealmaker within Rand Merchant Bank and as a Principle in Acquisition and Leverage Finance at Nedbank.
Chairing the Investment Committee, she is an actively involved independent non-executive director on the board of Ascendis Health Limited, overseeing the deleveraging of Ascendis through strategic disposals of certain assets. She is also an independent non-executive director on the board of Northam Platinum.
Yoza obtained a medical degree from Wits in 1998 and worked for four years in the medical profession before moving into finance, graduating with an MBA at Wits in 2003. She is actively involved in numerous outreach and social responsibility programmes.
Qualifications
MBChB (medical degree), 1998 University of the Witwatersrand
MBA (finance focus), 2003, University of the Witwatersrand
Stefan is originally from the UK and has a Financial Services background where he led the re-organisation and financial improvement of underperforming large scale service centres throughout the UK.
Stefan started the PwC South African Restructuring practice 11 years ago and since then has advised lenders and companies across sub-Saharan Africa on a range of complex restructuring and re-organisation matters across all industry sectors. He is a registered Business Rescue practitioner, taking statutory Chapter 6appointments.
He has since joined EY as the Africa TRS leader and is also a member of the TRS EMEIAleadership team.
He managed the executive team involved in the Curatorship of African Bank Limited which involved restructuring the domestic and international bonds, operational assessment and stabilisation of the bank and also included distressed M&Anegotiations on various subsidiary asset realisations.
Prior to this he was involved as lead advisor to lenders on the restructuring of a large diversified agricultural holding Group which resulted in an 18 month process of stabilisation and divestment. He was also lead advisor in balance sheet restructuring of a substantial mine funded by the IDC and African development Bank. In addition, he and his team have advised some major state owned entities regarding their state funding and recapitalisation plans.
His expertise has been to develop a cross sub Saharan Africa in country teams with the capability to provide the following services:
Independent Business Reviews, Turnaround planning, distressed M&A, working capital optimisation, Insolvency and Bankruptcy and Financial & Operational restructuring.
He and his team have been involved with a number of State Owned Entities assessing their financial and operationalperformance with a view to developing turnaround and restructuring initiatives including working capital benchmarking and balance sheet optimisation.
He recently advised +15 lenders on their exposure to a banking, insurance and mining conglomerate in Sub Saharan Africa. Prior to this, he ran an independent assessment of a large logistics provider for both their fleet and 3/4PL operations (cold store and supply chain).
Khurshid heads up Webber Wentzel’s restructuring and insolvency team and acts for both funders and corporates in relation to restructuring and debt reorganisations. She also acts for both lenders and borrowers in distressed debt negotiations, helping them navigate the complex factors that funders take into account in relation to defaulting borrowers. Khurshid joined Webber Wentzel in 2019 from Allen & Overy.
Olga is the Head of Credit at Futuregrowth Asset Management. In her role, she is responsible for the management of the credit and equity investment process, which includes managing a team of c.17 investment analysts, by ensuring that the process generates good quality, high-yielding assets for our clients' funds.
Futuregrowth Asset Management has c.R190bn in assets under management.
Olga is the current Chairperson of the Futuregrowth Credit Committee and was part of the team that made the decision to suspend lending to the six named SOEs in 2016. She and her team authored the report SOE Governance Unmasked: A Learning Journey in February 2018 and their focus on incorporating financial and non-financial (ESG) risks in their analytical process is ongoing.
She has been part of the Futuregrowth team since 2010. Her experience includes more than 20 years in credit risk, credit process and investment analysis. Olga holds a B.Bus.Sci (Finance) (Hons) and PGDipAcc from UCT and she qualified as a CA(SA) in 1999 after serving her articles with KPMG in Cape Town. Prior to joining Futuregrowth, she worked at Old Mutual Specialised Finance as a debt analyst, and at Thesele Group as an investment analyst.
Pavel is a Managing Partner of ProMeritum investment Management LLP. He is responsible for the research and business development of the firm. Prior to launching ProMeritum, Pavel was a senior credit analyst and an executive director within Goldman Sachs FICC EM trading, responsible for credit analysis and trading idea generation in EEMEA credits with the additional focus on debt restructuring and special situations. Prior to joining Goldman Sachs in 2010, Pavel held the position of a senior credit desk analyst and Director at Lehman Brothers and Nomura, covering corporates and financial institutions in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. In his role he was responsible for credit research but also involved in origination, structuring, pricing and distribution of privately structured fixed income transactions. Pavel worked alongside Anton in Renaissance in 2002-2007 as a senior credit analyst and Deputy Head of Fixed Income Research. Pavel’s career started in Credit Risk Management at CSFB, where he spent six years in London and Zurich. He holds a major in banking from the University of St. Gallen and a major in finance from the Humboldt University.
Thobeka Tubela is currently the Sector Head for State Owned Companies and the Telecommunications, Media and Technology sector at Rand Merchant Bank. Thobeka joined RMB in 2017 as a Business Development Director and has developed relationships with clients across Corporates and key State Owned Companies. She joined from Barclays Plc New York where she was the head of their Africa coverage business responsible for the US multi-national corporates with an African presence. Thobeka has more than 16 years of banking experience across sectors and product solutions. Thobeka is passionate about solving client challenges and partnering with them to drive their growth.
Lara has extensive experience in business rescue and restructuring, as well as insolvency related matters. She has acted for business rescue practitioners, curators, creditors, lenders and the suppliers of post-commencement finance in a number of large and high-profile business rescues. Lara has also acted for lenders, for various restructuring advisory teams and for companies in the carrying out of informal restructures and contingency planning in a distressed debt environment. Her expertise extends also to commercial litigation in the distressed debt and restructuring sphere.
Laura is a sovereign debt senior reporter for Debtwire CEEMEA. She holds an MSc in Conflict Studies from the London School of Economics and a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Exeter.