"What makes the rankings truly noteworthy is that greater weighting is given to the views of the clients who were surveyed," Brent Williams, CEO of Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr said. "This confirms that we are delivering excellent client service and are being rewarded for it. We are thrilled that our vision of becoming the leading business law firm in South Africa and Africa has once again been acknowledged by our clients and expressed through our numerous awards in the past 12 months."
Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr's top ranked practice areas are Technology, Media and Telecommunications, who retain their Band 1 ranking for a fifth year, and Capital Markets: Equity, ranked in Band 1 for the second year. Ranked in Band 2 this year are Banking and Finance; Capital Markets: Debt; Corporate M&A; Competition/Antitrust; Dispute Resolution; Projects & Energy; Employment and Tax. The practice areas that received Band 3 rankings were Construction and Energy; and Natural Resources: Mining.
Ludwig Smith, national head: Finance and Banking Practice; Johan Latsky, director: Corporate and Commercial; Pieter Conradie, director: Dispute Resolution; Preeta Bhaghattjee, national head: TMT practice; and Emil Brinker, national head: Tax Practice, all received a Band 1 ranking in their respective sectors.
Jackie King, Finance and Banking; Kieran Whyte, Projects & Energy; Willem Jacobs, Corporate M&A and Hugo Pienaar, Employment were ranked in Band 2.
Lawyers ranked in Band 3 were Jackie Pennington and Deon Wilken for Banking & Finance; Nick Altini and Chris Charter for Competition/Antitrust; Chris Ewing, David Thompson and Johan Latsky for Corporate/M&A; Allan Reid for Energy & Natural Resources: Mining; Ludwig Smith for Tax; Aadil Patel for Employment; Biddy Faber for Projects; Clem Daniel for IT & Telecommunications and Jonathan Witts-Hewinson for Dispute Resolution.
Natalie von Ey and Andries le Grange from Competition/Antitrust and Claire Barclay from Projects, were ranked in Band 4 and Peter Hesseling was ranked in Band 5 for Corporate M&A. Jurg van Dyk, a director in the Construction and Engineering Group, was highlighted as 'Up and Coming'.
