Kate goes out of her way to support clients in growing their businesses and consistently provides pragmatic solutions to complex, sophisticated and high-risk transactions to achieve optimal outcomes for her clients. Kate’s clients rely on her proactiveness and her discerning approach to assessing risks against their business context, to ensure they get their deals over the line while having full confidence in the excellent quality of the work product. Her strength lies in her ability to efficiently and promptly provide considered solutions that make business sense.

Kate is well-known for quickly getting to grips with cutting edge, innovative technologies, business models and solutions so that she can work with clients to enable implementation without delay. Kate’s experience in and in-depth understanding of a broad range of technology, IP and telecommunications transactions for both public and private local and international clients makes her adaptable and enables her to prioritize risks effectively and craft workable solutions for her clients.

Kate’s key focus areas include the financial services, consumer goods and public sectors.

Education

• BA LLB (magna cum laude), University of Cape Town

Professional Memberships

• Admitted Attorney of the High Court of South Africa.

Relevant Experience

Jurisdictions worked in: South Africa, Botswana, Egypt, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Recently Kate has advised:

• City of Cape Town:
  • on the appointment of a carrier network service provider and sales partner, pursuant to the Broadband Infrastructure Programme (BIP), undertaken to restructure and optimise the utilisation of the City’s broadband network infrastructure; and
  • on the appointment of a range of vendors pursuant to its 10-year digital transformation initiative relating to its core applications, the Core Applications Refresh (CAR) Programme.
• Old Mutual on the procurement of a variety of material information technology, telecommunications and converged solutions used in the conduct of the Old Mutual business.
• Alexforbes in relation to its key information and communications technology (ICT) projects, including:
  • Alexforbes’ multi-million rand long-term appointment of a very prominent, JSE-listed, multinational ICT service provider to provide a wide range of core managed network and information technology services across the Alexforbes group; and
  • the appointment of a very prominent, NYSE-listed, multinational technology company for the provision of information technology and consulting services, pursuant to implementation of the Alexforbes digitisation strategy.
• AB InBev and The South African Breweries (SAB):
  • on the exclusive licensing from Diageo of the rights to produce and distribute the Guinness and Smirnoff brands in South Africa, Lesotho and eSwatini, in Mozambique and in Zambia; and
  • on the exclusive licensing from Red Bull of the rights to distribute Red Bull products in South Africa and in Nigeria;
• NCR Corporation on the intellectual property and information technology aspects of the acquisition of Altron TMT Proprietary Limited (ATMT)’s ATM hardware and support business of ATMT’s Altron Managed Solutions division.
• The Motsepe Foundation on its highly publicized sponsorship of the Global Citizen Festival: Mandela 100 in Soweto in December 2018.

Awards

Member of the Firm’s TMT team recognised as the Technology, Media and Telecommunications Team of the Year by African Legal Awards for three consecutive years (2017 to 2019).

• South Africa: Sign with caution – using electronic signatures for IP transactions
• Lexology: A structured guide to Fintech in South Africa