Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr is pleased to announce the appointment of Peter Prinsloo as a director in the Corporate and Commercial practice on 1 July 2009.

Peter brings some 30 years legal experience to Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr including more than 20 years experience in corporate and commercial law. He specialises in mergers and acquisitions, restructuring and reorganisation of enterprises, funding transactions, the establishment of private equity funds, as well as BEE, outsourcing and cross border transactions. He has extensive hands-on experience, both as the lead attorney and as a team member in his areas of specialisation.

Peter was first admitted as an attorney in 1977 in Zimbabwe and then in South Africa in 1982. He joined Webber Wentzel on immigrating to South Africa in 1980. In 1992 he was invited by the worldwide Arthur Andersen organisation to become an international partner and head up and develop the legal side of its multidisciplinary practice in South Africa. In 1997, Peter established his own commercial law boutique firm, Prinsloo, Tindle and Andropoulos.

Over the past 14 years of practice, his experience has been spread between financial industry related transactions - private equity, structured finance, funding and securitisations - and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and other commercial work both within South Africa and cross border. He has played a prominent role in a number of significant BEE transactions ranging in value from many millions of rand to R4bn and in establishing various private equity funds ranging in size from R100m to R1bn. He has acted in various cross border funding and merger transactions and numerous restructurings and reorganisations of companies, both listed and non-listed.

Chris Ewing, Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr CEO, said: "Peter's appointment is tremendous news for our firm and is consistent with our policy of recruiting leading experts. Peter is one of South Africa's most experienced corporate and commercial lawyers and he has been closely involved at all levels of transactional work including negotiation, conceptualising, drafting and implementing transactions."

"The appointment is an important step in further developing the firm's Corporate and Commercial practice as one of the leading corporate, M&A and private equity teams in South Africa. The practice is already one of the largest, if not the largest in the country with more than 60 qualified lawyers, all of them specialists in their particular fields," said Ewing.