Vishal Koovejee

After spending over a decade at two leading law firms, I founded my own boutique law firm, Koovejee Incorporated, focused extensively on providing legal counsel on strategic commercial and business aspects of our corporate clients. The practice involved a number of diverse transactional matters with a strong focus on technology, telecommunications and financial services. I spent a considerable amount of time assisting clients with special projects ranging from corporate restructuring to assisting with the set-up of greenfield operations. I also developed a specialised understanding of assisting clients’ with the competitive market positioning of their products and services.

My skills-set is made up of:
1. Lawyer - I gained extensive experience across a myriad of industries during my 16 year career and developed in-depth expertise focused on:
• Transactional / Commercial which involved the drafting of a diverse variety of agreements / documentation required by clients ranging from merger and acquisitions, joint ventures, upstream supply agreements, downstream customer sales agreements, rental / lease agreements, loan and finance documentation, shareholder agreements, share and business sale agreements, principal and agency agreements, to mention a few.
• Regulatory / Compliance across a number of regulatory bodies including the Competition Authorities (multijurisdictional), Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, Financial Services Board, and the Advertising Standards Authority. I have in depth experience in acting for both the complainant and the defendant in such proceedings, and also in devising comprehensive compliance and training programmes across regulatory environments. In particular, I have been involved in dawn raids conducted by authorities and this assisted me in developing appropriate dawn raid policies, electronic data management policies, and more broadly information protection and sharing policies. I have specialised experience in relation to anti-money laundering policies, strategic development of information technology products in the banking industry, development of partner / franchisee compliance frameworks, competitor interaction policies (which generally impacted on all areas of operations), and policies relating to third parties and media management. I have also been involved in over 100 merger filings with the Competition Authorities in Africa, as well as acted in prohibited practices matters for both the complainant and the defendant, and for over 10 dominant firms.

2. In-House Legal Counsel - An inherent function in regulatory and compliance work is the assessment of the overall business of a client to test and enhance compliance with applicable regulation / legislation. Since the work is typically of a sensitive commercial nature meant that I often worked with board directors and senior executives at clients. The scope of the regulatory and compliance work also resulted in me being exposed to detailed aspects of the client’s business and often created opportunities for me to service legal requirements across business units of clients which included sales, marketing, finance, information technology, human resources, and real estate. Examples of the type of work done are:
• Assisting a telecommunications company with fibre and infrastructure roll out from the conception phase to drafting of sharing agreements and post completion maintenance contracts
• Vetting all marketing campaigns of a FMCG manufacturer including electronic platforms to ensure strategic suitability of the campaigns
• Advising on full market penetration strategy of new product development for a technology company
• Advising the board of directors of a financial services company on strategic software development
• Advising a commodities manufacturer with devising an international sales penetration strategy
• Assisting a real estate company in setting up a property portfolio of significant size.

I was head-hunted to join the firm which remains a top 5 law firm in South Africa today. I practiced as a partner and director in the corporate and commercial law department managing all aspects of my own team of professional and support staff, including budget management, KPIs, and skills development. I joined the firm in a senior position with the intention of developing and enhancing the capability and skills set of my team. I initiated an internal weekly training programme for junior professional staff which focussed extensively on practice upliftment. I also assisted the firm in developing a software application aimed at training and compliance related activities for a large multinational corporate organisation.

I commenced my articles of clerkship with the firm on 02 January 2001 immediately after completing my studies and was appointed as a partner and director in April 2004. I practiced in the commercial and corporate law department, and played a pivotal role in building a world class team. I also served actively on the recruitment committee of the firm, and various management fora within the firm. The clients that I represented included governments, regulators, parastatals, and corporate clients, and often involved advising boards of directors as a specialist legal advisor.