Team size: Seven

What are the most significant cases and transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

The Red Rocket legal team has recently supported the broader Red Rocket business in the following significant transactions: Reaching financial close for Witberg Wind Farm, 103 MW contracted capacity, the largest private wind farm constructed in South Africa to date for offtaker Sibanye Stillwater (deal value ZAR3.4bn); reaching financial close for Brandvalley Wind Farm, 144 MW capacity, as part of the South African REIPP programme (deal value ZARR4.4bn); reaching financial close for Rietkloof Wind Farm, 144 MW capacity, as part of the South African REIPP programme (deal value ZARR4.4bn); reaching financial close for Wolf Wind Farm, 85 MW contracted capacity, as part of the South African REIPP programme (deal value ZARR3.4bn); Red Rocket Capital Raise of $160m with Inspired Evolution Investment Management, FMO (the Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank) and STOA Infra and Energy.

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense? 

I have structured my team slightly differently to the standard legal team organisation in an IPP and renewable energy business context. Each legal counsel is seconded as a specialist to our operational teams needing support. As a fully integrated IPP, this would include legal support to the development team (with a legal counsel specialised in land and property, and some expertise in M&A work), the transactions team (with a legal counsel specialised in project finance), the procurement and construction team (with a legal counsel specialised in construction law) and the asset management team (again either a banking and finance, corporate finance or project finance specialist). In parallel to these specialists, we have a core general counsel team who look after the corporate transactions and support, but who also have both the capacity and the skill to step in to assist their specialist colleagues where needed.

To ensure optimal cross-capacitation and that upskilling is adequately addressed within this structure, the team also meets regularly to share learnings and experiences in their respective seconded departments. In order to ensure maximum value-added to each Red Rocket department, each specialist must understand the full legal framework within which the business works and how their area of expertise ties into the larger picture.

How do you see the general counsel role evolving in South Africa over the next five-ten years? 

I have had the privilege of an exciting and varied professional journey. As an attorney in a large corporate to start-up, in-house to private practice, running my own business to CEO of an international start-up, serving as the deputy consul general of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Cape Town, and now heading up the legal affairs team of a renewable energy IPP, I have been able to accumulate a wealth of diverse commercial and legal skills that form a solid base for a general counsel role.

As I access those skills, I am starting to realise that my role is evolving more and more into managing relationships: relationships with my team, relationships with the other team heads in our business, relationships with our executive and board, and relationships with our key services providers. I believe this will become the reality of general counsel positions within the South African landscape.

Where above is where I believe we are headed as legal leaders, where I hope we are headed is around the table of strategic decision-makers in our respective businesses. Rather than the usual handbrake, the barrier to commercial dreams, the compliance tick-boxers that are consulted only after the fact, I think the South Africa business arena is ready to embrace the value of welcoming general counsel to their decision-making tables. Not simply to advise, but with their wealth of commercial, financial and legal skills, to be a real part of building solutions and growing businesses.