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Making a real difference: ENS adds banking and finance lawyer Alex Cullinan to its Cape Town office
With more than 600 specialist practitioners, ENS is Africa's largest law firm, with offices in Eastern, Southern and Western Africa. On Wednesday, it announced White & Case local partner Alex Cullinan was joining its Banking and Finance Practice in South Africa.
Newly hired Executive Alex Cullinan is “exactly the kind of lawyer who makes a real difference to clients navigating cross-border transactions”, shared ENS partner Deborah Carmichael when celebrating the addition of Cullinan, a former White & Case local partner, to the firm’s Cape Town office and Banking and Finance Practice.
“Alex is an exceptional addition to ENS,” shared Carmichael last week. “She is dual qualified in both South Africa and the UK, multilingual, and brings deep, hands on experience in, amongst other things, data centre and fund finance.”
Alex brings more than 15 years of experience advising lenders, corporates and funds on complex cross-border financing transactions across Africa and Europe, and has worked in the South African offices of several leading international law firms, including Norton Rose Fulbright, Allen & Overy, Freshfields, and White & Case.
"Alex's appointment reinforces our continued investment in our cross-border financing capabilities and our commitment to providing integrated, market-leading legal support to banking and finance clients across Africa and internationally,” said Craig Saven, Head of Banking and Finance at ENS, when the new was announced last Wednesday. “We look forward to having her on the team.”
When making the official announcement, ENS noted that Alex’s fluency in English, French, Dutch and Afrikaans, would further strengthen the pan-African firm’s ability to support clients operating across multiple jurisdictions. A University of Cape Town graduate, where she obtained LLB and LLM degrees, Alex has been recognised as a "Highly Regarded" lawyer by IFLR1000 and a "Key Lawyer" by Legal 500.
Her practice focuses on acquisition finance, leveraged finance, real estate and infrastructure finance, fund finance, debt restructuring, and sustainability-linked lending. “Thanks to everyone at ENS for the incredibly warm welcome so far … very excited to be a part of this team!” shared Alex after the announcement.
Her appointment further strengthens the firm’s multilingual and cross-border capabilities, after the arrival in June, as reported by Africa Legal, of trilingual mining and natural resources expert Andréa Cabanac as an Executive in Johannesburg.