CDH welcomes multi-disciplinary finance lawyer Johan de Lange to its ranks

He has led landmark financing transactions with all the major Johannesburg banks, several London and New York-based banks, and financial institutions, including most of the American and European international development finance institutions. Transactionally Johan’s experience extends to those areas of law where finance law interfaces with project development, mergers and acquisitions, taxation as well as bank and financial institution regulation.

Johan will leverage his full suite of finance expertise and experience to benefit our valued clients across the finance domain. As part of this he has been appointed as the Deputy Head of our Finance & Banking practice where he will play a critical role in supporting this well-established and dynamic team as they solidify their status as leading lawyers in this area of law. Mashudu Mphafudi, Head of the Finance & Banking practice welcomes Johan’s addition to the team, saying “As a client-centric team, we are confident that our clients will benefit from Johan’s expertise and strategic mind-set which complements our current high-end service offering and synergistic team.”

At the same time, a key aspect of Johan’s focus will be to provide a substantial further project finance capability to the existing market-leading Projects & Infrastructure sector headed by Andrew van Niekerk. Says Van Niekerk, “We are excited to have Johan join our Projects & Infrastructure group – with his substantial finance skills and experience added to our existing market-leading project development capability, we are confident that our ability to continue delivering a full-spectrum, best-in-class projects offering will be second to none in the domestic and regional markets.”

Brent Williams, CEO of CDH, adds “With the renewed focus on self-generation/embedded generation projects in light of deregulated power sectors and increasing power shortages across SSA, Johan will also bring his unparalleled project finance experience to our clients with project and project finance service needs as well as to assist them to capitalise on potential opportunities in power, energy and infrastructure projects across the Sub-Saharan African region.” Van Niekerk agrees, “Johan is well versed in this area of law and has represented large lender groups on several landmark financing transactions including on the financing of the Khi Solar One, Kaxu Solar One, and Xina Solar One concentrated solar plants of Abengoa, and the financing of the Amakhala Emoyeni wind farm, amongst others. He is known for his experience and deal-making approach on large bank and institutional syndicated financings for capital-intensive leveraged deals, including projects and infrastructure, and with the team combinations we will now be pushing into the field, we fully believe our client offering in this area will continue to set the benchmark.”

We look forward to Johan joining us in exceeding our clients’ expectations.