Debt Capital Markets & Derivatives

Our cross-border debt capital markets and derivatives team brings a unique advantage to clients transacting across Africa: we are dual qualified UK- and South Africa lawyers in South Africa.  This distinctive positioning enables us to deliver international – standard legal advice with deep local insight at competitive rates. 

Our team provides banks, governments and public authorities, clearing houses, asset and investment managers, funds as well as a large variety of institutional investors and corporate clients with a wide range of transactional and advisory services for all aspects of debt capital markets and derivatives transactions involving South Africa and other African countries.

In a fast-changing investment and regulatory environment there is a clear need to find workable flexible solutions. Our team forms a part of CMS’ International Capital Markets practice and handles with the support of over 85+ offices globally and a network of firms in other African countries all phases of your transactions, from negotiation and documentation, through the structuring, development and restructuring of debt instruments and derivatives.

We are actively following and advising on the regulatory, fintech and other developments that impact the debt and derivative markets to be at the forefront of the latest technical and market innovations.

Debt Capital Markets 

The debt capital market transactions on which we regularly advise include: 

• debt instrument investments and disposals
• debt instrument listings
• debt programmes 
• debt liability management
• equity-linked debt instruments 
• exchange offers and restructurings
• high yield debt 
• hybrid and subordinated debt instruments
• standalone debt issuances 

Derivatives

On the derivatives front we work with our clients to develop structures that satisfy both their business strategy and the appropriate legal and regulatory requirements. It includes the more standard types such as foreign exchange, commodities and interest rate derivatives, credit derivatives as well as more exotic products, and our activities include:

• collateral structures
• derivatives regulatory and capacity advice and legal opinions 
• documenting OTC and exchange traded derivatives transactions 
• finance-linked hedging transactions
• repos, stock loans and margin loan transactions
• structured notes